


Not All Stars Are Fire

by thehiddenbaroness



Category: Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types
Genre: Adventure, F/M, Fantasy, Gen, Mystery, Post-Canon, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 23:10:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 34,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9094819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehiddenbaroness/pseuds/thehiddenbaroness
Summary: There has been peace in Ingary for five years - peace threatened by a spell cast by Madame Suliman’s daughter, the Witch of the Waters. When both the visiting Prince Justin’s son and the witch disappear, it is up to the King’s Captain of the Guard to seek Howl and Sophie’s help in finding them and in the process, they discover there is more to the daughter - and the Captain - than meets the eye. [Movieverse]





	1. Daughter Suliman

**Author's Note:**

> A Note from the Author: Welcome and thanks for stopping by! A quick note to say that I am basing this in the Studio Ghibli movie's universe, though I have taken certain factoids from the books (not read, but researched). This is my first HMC fic; I hope you enjoy!

**Chapter 1: Daughter Suliman**

 

“Ma’am, your daughter is at the door,” said one page that had appeared in the dim light.

“You sent for her,” another reminded.

Madame Suliman put down her quill, looking up from her desk. “Send her in,” she said, and lifted her small reading glasses to wipe her eyes. She wondered what time it was.

The small footfalls of the pages padded away over the lacquered floor of her study, dark except for the two stained-glass oil lamps that sat at either end of her desk and cast a circle of multicolored light that fell only a few feet or so off the edge. She sat back in her wheelchair upon hearing the door open. A different kind of light - muted, like a candle glow on water - entered the room in the form of a young woman, and walked toward the desk. She stopped just out of reach of the lamps’ light and waited.

“Come closer, ĺde,” Madame Suliman invited, her voice soft and warm and amused by the formality ĺde still retained after all these years. She glanced at the pages lingering at the door, “Leave us.”

ĺde entered the light, which was eaten by the dark folds of her dress but made her skin glow like a pearl and the caramel-blonde of her loose hair shine like oil. She sat down in one of the chairs opposite, as poised as a work of art. “Is something the matter, Mother?” she asked.

“It’s late, I know,” Madame Suliman said and picked up her quill, finishing her thought on the paper in front of her.

“Not very,” ĺde said, her voice treading on disinterested.

“His Majesty took his time, as always, in letting me know that there’s to be a visit from Prince Justin of Strangia tomorrow. I thought I would let you know so you might be present with me to greet him and his wife and son.” Not wholly the truth - while the King did take a while to tell Madame Suliman about the visit, she knew it wouldn’t have done much good to tell ĺde too far in advance; she’d likely have forgotten by the time the day came. It was an accepted after-effect of the amnesia charms to which Madame Suliman had learned to adapt.

“Of course.”

“Good - I’ll have you called in the morning, when I’m told they’re to arrive.”

This close to ĺde, Madame Suliman felt the magic within her strengthen immensely, like a deep breath when one has been holding it too long without realizing. As disappointing as it was for a diplomatic visit to interrupt it, she was looking forward to continuing her research into using ĺde’s own magic to restore the older woman’s use of her legs, and perhaps more. Her health had already improved immensely ever since her...acquisition of ĺde several years ago - it could only get better from here.

She glanced up at ĺde, straight into her blue-green eyes. She received a small smile, as though ĺde was half-asleep - which, Madame Suliman supposed she was, in a way - and returned it. She couldn’t deny she had grown a little fond of her ‘adopted daughter’, despite her best efforts; ĺde was only a means to an end, she had to remind herself, no matter her devotion. She looked away.

“It’s due to rain tomorrow, and no doubt the King would be pleased if you could clear the sky. You should rest,” she said, though she knew a demon hardly had need of it.

“If you’d like,” ĺde said, and rose.

 

* * *

 

ĺde pulled the door to her mother’s study closed behind her, and made her way back to her rooms in the palace via the rooftop garden that formed a courtyard between them. The cool of the clear night, the warmest it’d been this winter, enveloped her as soon as she stepped outside, and a few paces into its carefully-tended beds and topiary she stopped to look up at the myriad of stars. A breeze sifted pleasantly through her hair, streaking it across her face.

A clearing of a throat caught her attention, and she located its source: the youngest Captain of the Guard to have ever been appointed, Tristan De Leon, on a stone bench nearby with a glass-paned lantern beside him. He held a small book closed in one hand with a finger to mark his page. He rose and bowed to her, “Miss Suliman.” His breath fogged in the air.

“Captain,” she greeted in turn and pulled the hair out of her face. She could see that he was off-duty by his lack of uniform; why he chose to spend his free time here in the place of his employment spoke too well of his love for work and concern for his monarch. She found it unusual to find such dedication in a man as young as he was - to her knowledge, he was only a handful of years older than herself.

“Do you ever sleep, Miss Suliman?” he asked, with a trace of good-natured derision.

“Do you, Captain De Leon?”

The two shared a small smile of defeat. Although it had been her mother’s wish that ĺde form a friendship of sorts with the Captain in case it was ever politically useful - and, she suspected, he had done the same with her for the sake of keeping an eye on her mother - over the past couple of years it had become more genuine if still reluctant. ĺde found the Captain was one of the few figures in her strange life that she could remember in any great detail from day to day, and enjoyed his rare company. He treated her differently than most - with less fear, less awe.

“My mother sent for me,” she said in answer to his previous question.

He made a noise, as though something about her reply made him dubious.

ĺde walked closer to better assess his expression; indeed, she could see the barely-hidden skepticism in the way his forehead creased and his brown eyes narrowed, making his already-stern face that much more so. “What?” she asked with a smile.

“Nothing,” he said. “You’ve heard of Prince Justin’s visit, I take it?”

“I have. It’ll be something to liven up our dreary trudge out of winter into spring,” she said.

“You’re not going to give us a spring festival this year, Miss Suliman?”

“Soon. But even I can’t force what isn’t ready.” She glanced around her at the ornamental trees, still skeletal but studded with burgeoning buds, and then at the book in the Captain’s gloveless hand. “Is it such a good read, that it can make you ignore the cold?”

He tipped forward a little to look down at the book, which made his brown ponytail slip over his shoulder. “I’ve never minded the cold much, but your breath isn’t even fogging. Is that a witch’s talent?”

ĺde folded her hands in front of her. She wasn’t sure how to answer - she didn’t want to tell him that in contrast, most of her life consisted of fog.

It must have shown on her face because he said, “Forget I said anything - it’s not my business.”

“No, it’s all right. It must be my speciality in water magic. In any event I don’t mind the cold either.” When there was too long a pause, she said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Captain. Goodnight.”

“Here,” he said, and picked up the lantern from the bench and handed it to her. “To light your way.”

Not wanting to insult him by saying she did not need it, ĺde took it. “Thank you.”

“Goodnight, Miss Suliman.”

 

* * *

 

Tristan and the King stood at the top of the palace steps under the cover of its ornamental eaves; it was after dawn, but one couldn’t tell too well on account of the storm that sent sheets of rain over the marble steps. Beside them hovered the palace staff, their hands full of rolled banners, bunting and garlands of greenery.

“Yes, I think that will do nicely,” the King said, and gestured again at the rails and topiary either side of the steps. “And if we can get some above the gate there, all the better.”

“As you wish, Sire.”

“Sorry to keep you waiting, your Majesty.”

The two men turned; ĺde joined them.

“Excellent,” said the King. He waved a hand at the sky as lightning streaked across it, “Daugther Suliman, if you’d be so kind as to get rid of this mess I’d be grateful to you. It’ll make the airships’ flight a lot smoother on the descent.” He excused himself and disappeared back into the bowels of the waking palace.

The King had barely finished speaking and ĺde was already stepping out into the rain, walking down the steps. She headed for the small plateau midway through the stairway and was soaked through in an instant, her loose hair darkening to a dull honey color between her shoulderblades. Had he not known better Tristan would have been worried that she would catch cold, but ĺde didn’t seem in the least bit bothered. In contrast, he noticed her beginning to glow - something she’d always seemed to have at least faintly, but on these occasions the luminosity of her skin would strengthen to a gleam like pale fire. He’d not seen anything like it, even among witches and wizards.

ĺde raised a hand and suddenly, all rain froze in midair from her body outward, rippling like a swift wave through the palace grounds, the city, and finally the larger valley that held Ingary in its palm. Her hand remained still, too, while her other then rose above her head and made a stirring motion at the towering bruise-colored clouds. Tristan watched in awe as the lacework of a frozen lightning burst retreated to its origin point, and the clouds began to swirl with the motion of her hand, thinning and paling. More light began to fall upon the land as the clouds shredded themselves like pulled cotton; ĺde flung her hand to the west and what remained of the now-rainless clouds fled there to linger low among the foothills of the mountains.

Sunshine blazed over Ingary, turning the frozen raindrops into sparkling diamonds. ĺde at last moved her stilled hand, and as though conducting an orchestra, the orphaned rain began to lazily divide, spiral and sail like glittering, translucent serpents with minds of their own. With a flick of her wrists they began to travel by themselves without her instruction; ĺde turned back to the palace.

“Where are you sending them?” Tristan found himself asking, a little dazed though this wasn’t the first time he’d seen her use her magic.

“The rivers, the streams, the ponds and the wells,” she said. “Anywhere useful.”

Tristan averted his eyes as she ascended the stairs - the rather diaphanous sky-blue dress she wore was clinging to her body on account of being wet still. Instead he turned to the staff and jerked his head at the stairwell, sending them out to begin preparations.

“The ground will be dry by the time the Prince arrives - the sun will take care of that,” said ĺde.

He glanced back at her as she passed; she had dried herself instantly some kind of way, leaving a trail of shining droplets in her wake that floated out and up. ĺde disappeared back into the shadow of the palace.

Tristan often wondered how Madame Suliman had found someone like ĺde with such magical talent. Purportedly, she had kept ĺde during childhood in a private residence somewhere until she had her abilities under control to make her joining her adoptive mother in the palace acceptable, which had coincided with the Madame’s instatement as Royal Sorcerer. Otherwise, the pair’s history had remained cryptic to him and ĺde did not volunteer much. Wizards and witches of various talents and ability had come and gone under Tristan’s nose since then - either as an infantryman, a Lieutenant, or Captain - but none had demonstrated such thorough affinity with a base element. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure she was a witch, exactly, but couldn’t begin to guess at what she could be instead.  

 

* * *

 

“Mama, mama!”

Sophie finally looked down at the incessant tugging on her apron, “What is it, Morgan?” She swept the last of the ashes out of the hearth into the dustpan, in turn tipping them into the metal bin beside her before clamping down its lid.

“When Daddy gets back, can we go to the parade?”

Sophie squashed her impatience. “That’s the fifth time you’ve asked me that, darling - yes, we’ll go to the parade when Daddy gets home.” She propped up the dustpan and brush in their spot by the fireplace, and then turned to the four year-old beside her with her hands on her hips, “Have you picked up your toys?”

He nodded.

“Put your shoes back where they belong?”

He nodded.

She raised an eyebrow. “Finished your breakfast?”

Morgan’s face brightened. “Even the eggs and they were cold!”

Sophie hummed to herself and passed a hand through his inky hair. “I knew you took after me,” she whispered conspiratorially and tickled him. She walked over to the dining table to begin picking up the plates from breakfast an hour ago.

“Will we see Prince Justin?” Morgan asked and tried to push in his chair, though Sophie had to help him.

“I’m sure we will. And if you’re very good, maybe he’ll come to dinner and you can play with Edward.”

Morgan whined. “Edward’s boring. He never wants to play chase or climb or -”

Sophie cut him a sharp look, “Don’t be rude, Morgan. He can’t play those things on account of his health, you know that. I know it’s frustrating, but there are other things you can play with him, hmm?” She crouched next to him, plates in hand, and tilted her head to get him to look up out of his sulk, “You’re not going to make many friends like this. What do you think you can do with Edward?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do. Take a moment and think,” she encouraged.

Morgan thought for a moment, and that alone made his frustration dissipate a little. “I can show him my fossil collection,” he suggested.

“There you go! What a good idea! And you thought of it all by yourself.” She stood. “Let me put these up and then let’s go ahead and get you changed; your father will be home soon.”

 

* * *

 

The parade containing the carriage of Prince Justin and his family finally finished its sweep up the streets of Ingary and entered the gates of the palace grounds; Tristan watched with satisfaction as his soldiers fanned out perfectly and repositioned themselves to accommodate for the new surroundings or fall back, while those stationed at the gate or on the steps leading up to the palace snapped to attention. He was eager for the pomp and circumstance to be over - they’d been standing out here ever since the airship from Strangia docked over an hour ago and while he’d wait for as long as it took, he had more productive things he could be doing with his time.

He stood to the royal family’s right, on the last step below them, and looked at them in profile; Madame Suliman’s wheelchair was positioned directly beside them on their left like another member of the family herself and had one not known better, judging by the formality of her attire one might think she was. Tristan disliked such assumptions. Miss Suliman - ĺde - meanwhile was immediately opposite him, an arm’s reach away from her mother on the next step down. Although everyone standing had shifted tiredly feet several times over, ĺde had barely moved, as though made of ice or stone - the picture of absolute composure, which he envied despite having heard similar comments about himself. She wore a gown of stiff plum-colored brocade that covered her chin to toe, and her hair had been elegantly coiffed; he had to remind himself that she was the Witch of the Waters rather than some noblewoman, but it was in a different sentiment than he did with her mother. She noticed him staring and smiled, nodded left and down to divert his attention back to where it belonged.

Below them, at the foot of the steps, the carriage had pulled to a stop and its door opened, allowing Prince Justin, his wife the Princess Beatrice, and their son Edward to spill out. From another carriage further back a handmaid and a butler hurried forward to follow the family up the stairs. Halfway up the butler picked up the frail Edward - whom, as Tristan understood it, had a breathing condition - and carried him the rest of the way.

“Uncle! So good to see you again!” Prince Justin called as they reached the top. The two families greeted each other.

“It’s been too long, dear nephew. I trust your journey was uneventful?” the King asked.

“It was comfortable, thank you. And we had the good fortune of getting over the mountain in time to see your Royal Sorcerers here disperse the storms, didn’t we, Edward?”

Edward nodded excitedly as the butler put him down. He beamed at Madame and Miss Suliman, “You even stopped the lightning!”

Madame Suliman chuckled. “In a way. But all the credit must go to my daughter,” she raised a hand in ĺde’s direction, who curtsied deeply at the attention.

“You have a great talent, Daughter Suliman, to have removed so large a storm so quickly,” Princess Beatrice complimented.

“Thank you, your Highness.”

“Shall we go in? I’m sure you’re hungry for lunch by now,” the King suggested and the doors to the palace opened; they began to file inside.


	2. Night of the Spring Flush

**Chapter 2: Night of the Spring Flush**

 

Later that evening found the two royal families and numerous guests banqueting and dancing in the great hall. Amber light from the setting sun filtered through the tall wall of windows on the far wall, rivaling the chandeliers, and turned all of the pastel shades of the women’s gowns into deeper jewel tones that whirled about over the mosaics that made up the floor. This was the kind of magic Tristan preferred: a mundane kind, perhaps fleeting but all the more moving as a result. He even allowed himself to relax a little and enjoy the sights; his men were on rotation and the King had invited the King’s Guard - at Tristan’s agreement - to join in on the merriment as their shifts came and went. Tristan himself wandered around the perimeter leisurely, his hands behind his back, but everything seemed to be proceeding gently and happily without much need for him. 

He did another scan of the room to locate his many charges, as he’d come to view them: the King and Queen of Ingary sat at their table with Madame Suliman beside them, amusing young Prince Edward, while both the Princess and her cousins, Prince Justin and Princess Beatrice, twirled about the floor. It took him longer to locate Miss Suliman. Indeed, he had to get near to the other side of the room before he could spot her, like a copper leaf caught on water, dancing what seemed like reluctantly with one of his men - Pritchard. His hand was far too low on her back, his face too close to hers no matter how far back she tried to lean. 

As Tristan made his way closer to intercept, he reflected that this wasn’t the first time he’d had to discipline one of his men where Miss Suliman was concerned, though usually it was in response to verbal missteps - crude comments and suggestions passed among them in whispers and snickers - rather than physical ones. He supposed he should have known better, that it was only a matter of time. He should have been firmer in his deterrents. She was an attractive woman, after all. Objectively-speaking, of course.

He’d nearly reached them, sliding through the other dancers to close the last piece of distance. Neither had noticed him. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but he knew that whatever it was burned strangely urgent when he saw Pritchard lean in and whisper something in ĺde’s ear, prompting her to freeze on the spot with alarm. She tried to jerk away but Pritchard held her wrist so tight his knuckles were white. Tristan laid a heavy hand on Pritchard’s shoulder and guided him insistently to one side; ĺde was released.

“I think you’ve had enough revelry for one evening, Pritchard,” he said, surprised by the slight growl to his voice. When the man opened his mouth to object, Tristan said, “Dismissed, Pritchard. We’ll discuss this later.”

Pritchard straightened his uniform jacket with a violent tug and walked swiftly away. ĺde came to stand in his place, looking up at Tristan. “Thank you, but I could have handled it.”

He doubted it, but didn’t want to call her out on it. Realizing they were in the way of other dancers, he offered her his arm and escorted her off to the side. They stood under the light of a candelabra sconce and watched the dancers in silence; Tristan snuck a glance or two at her to see that she was calming down. He felt as though he should say something, but couldn’t form a sentence that sounded good enough to utter. On the third glance she caught his eye and rapidly looked away over the crowd. 

Tristan’s mouth parted uncertainly, “I’m not very talented at it, but, would you like to dance?” 

After a moment she said, “I’m not very good at it either, but - if you’d like.” Tristan looked at her, surprised by the warmth in her voice underneath the small, polite smile he always thought she gave because it was expected. She even shrugged a little. “We can go slow.” She held out her hands and waited.

He wished she’d declined. He wished he hadn’t suggested it. But he took her hand anyway, placed his other flat and gentle against the middle of her back. They moved back into the flow and Tristan tried his best to remember what to do in a waltz, but it was a struggle and Miss Suliman had to lead herself until they got vaguely into the swing of things. He tried not to feel embarrassment, to not look at the other couples moving far more gracefully and swiftly to the appropriate tempo. 

“You’ve never waltzed, Captain?” Miss Suliman asked. He couldn’t look her in the eye, concentrating too hard on not stepping on her or bumping into anyone.

“Not in public.”

“Mother told me to learn, in case it was useful.”

Useful. That word at the root of their acquaintance. “And has it been useful, Miss Suliman?” 

“If you’re asking me that because you think I’m up to no good, I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

He was now comfortable enough to look at pieces of her - the way the copper satin of her dress, the porcelain of her skin, the gold of her hair, and the luster of the pearls she wore over all of them turned her into a vessel collecting the evening’s light. He was abruptly reminded of honeysuckle, the vines of it covering the fence around his childhood home and the marooned summers, and recognized it was because she smelled of it.

“You normally wear blue,” he remarked. “Cold colors, at least.”

“I’m surprised you noticed,” she quipped. They began another turn about the room; both their steps had grown more confident, he realized. “Don’t worry, it’s just for the Spring Flush. I’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”

Tristan caught the smirk at the corner of her mouth, and shortly thereafter the vividness of her gaze. “That’s a relief,” he quipped back. He began more quietly, “They suit -”

The string quartet abruptly cut out and the King’s voice replaced it. “Ladies and Gentlemen!” Tristan spotted the King standing on the musicians’ stage, his arms happily raised and his cheeks red, leading Tristan to think he’d drunk too much port. “I’d like to thank you for being here tonight for our Spring Flush Ritual - if you’d be so kind as to proceed to the west grounds, the Ingary Magnolia awaits!”

Both Tristan and Miss Suliman made an exasperated noise at the same time as the crowd began to move as one; Tristan hurriedly but politely cleared a path so that Miss Suliman could get out of the hall before most of them due to her role in the ritual. They exited through one of the glass doors in the wall of windows, leaving the warmth and smell of perfumes and food behind for the refreshing chill of the dusk. Miss Suliman proceeded ahead on her own across the lawn, while Tristan took a wider and slower route to help guide the guests. He watched the little Prince Edward speed forward through the adults to catch up with Miss Suliman and grab her hand, which he found as surprising as she did. She slowed her pace to accommodate him.

Pigeons took flight as the merry group pranced along the side of the palace in the light of its windows, laughing. Servants were hurrying out with lanterns and shawls for the women as the sun began to quickly finish its setting. Ahead, in a slate-tiled courtyard guarded by torches was the large ‘Ingary Magnolia’, a broad tree shaped like the skeleton of a flame that was nearly as old as the palace itself; its twin on the other side of the palace had been struck by lightning decades ago and soon died thereafter. It had since become a popular attraction in tours to the public and was the site for the recently-established annual Spring Flush Ritual which, when successful, initiated Ingary’s spring festival. Something of which Miss Suliman had been at the forefront since she had arrived in the palace. 

Tristan took up watch on a slight rise near the tree in the shadows. Miss Suliman and Prince Edward stepped into the courtyard and into the light of the lanterns strung in the magnolia; she was a pale flame amongst the bare, silvery branches. She released Prince Edward’s hand and he went to his mother as the rest of the royal family joined them, along with Madame Suliman. The other guests began to gather, too, and Tristan sought slightly higher and closer ground to keep Miss Suliman in sight, though he knew no one was in any real danger.

She was a few yards away, but he remembered the details without having to see them - it was the same every year, after all. Miss Suliman grasped a branch, pulling it gently to her with one hand while the other equally gently grasped a barely-there flower bud. Her skin was glowing, as though reflecting all the light around her. She shimmered, and water began to bead on her, traveling over her body and dampening her clothes in the process as it ran up her arm and into her hand, liquid light coursing into her fingertips and into the bud until it too was glowing. She waited a few moments before releasing it. Other parts of the tree began to glow here and there in patches before fading, as though whispering to themselves.

When the bud did not blossom, Miss Suliman looked across at her mother and shook her head. “Not yet, your Highness,” said Madame Suliman. “Not an early spring.”

The crowd let out a collective sigh of disappointment.

“Seems we’ll have to wait a little longer for our spring festival, everyone!” the King called, still in good cheer. “Never fear, it means we’ll get to enjoy the punch season that much more!”

Tristan couldn’t help but smile to himself. The crowd began to wander away, most back to the warmth of the great hall though some wandered around the Ingary Magnolia. Prince Edward was excitedly quizzing Miss Suliman about her magic; she knelt down to be closer to his height and was smiling wider than he had seen her do so before, patiently answering. Tristan walked closer to them. 

“...don’t you remember people?” Prince Edward was asking her.

“There was an accident when I was little like you,” she said. “It made it hard for me to remember many things.”

“Can’t you fix it with your magic?”

Miss Suliman shook her head, “No, not even Madame Suliman can do that.”

Tristan had often wondered that himself but had never felt in a position to ask - he was grateful for the obliviousness of a child.

The pair noticed him, then. Prince Edward looked between them. “Do you remember him?”

“Strangely, yes,” she smiled. She turned back to the boy, “And I shall try harder to remember you, good Prince. Forgive me.”

“It’s okay!” 

Tristan noticed the boy’s breathing was oddly labored for having stood still so long; he was relieved when his mother called the boy and reminded him about medicine and bed. When he pouted, Tristan said, “Best listen to your mother, your Highness. We don’t want you to catch cold.”

Prince Edward trotted back toward his parents at the entrance to the hall, leaving them alone.

“It’s occasions like this that make me wish I had a better memory,” said Miss Suliman sadly. She rose.

“Can Madame Suliman really do nothing to help it?” he asked. He found it hard to believe that someone as powerful as Madame Suliman would have limits - her own health seemed to have improved ever since her daughter’s arrival and in fact, he was hopeful that Prince Edward might benefit in the same way as Ingary as a whole had from the Sulimans. 

“She says there are just some things that cannot be healed,” she shrugged and shook her head. “I’ve learned to work around it.”

Quiet fell. Tristan noticed the water droplets still on ĺde’s bare shoulders, like stray pearls, and unbuttoned his uniform jacket. He took it off and draped it around her, in the same moment realizing that for once he had thought of her not as Miss Suliman, but as ĺde. It surprised him a little and he hesitated, as if she could detect the trespass. They caught each other’s eye. 

After a moment he said, “Seems I’m having trouble with my memory, too. I forgot that you don’t mind the cold.”

ĺde, however, tucked the jacket tighter about her, holding on to its collar with fine-boned hands. She looked at the ground, as though embarrassed. “We should get back.” She walked on ahead, back to the hall sitting in the twilight like a half-inflated hot air balloon. Tristan trailed her, wrestling with the irony of regaining the distance that was usually between them. 


	3. "You said I fell."

**Chapter 3: “You said I fell.”**

 

For some reason the evening’s activities had taken more of a toll on ĺde than they usually did. She sat in her room tiredly brushing her hair in front of her vanity, preparing to take a rare night’s sleep to hopefully calm her mind. The clock above her dormant fireplace struck eleven. Her thoughts began to turn - as they had a few times already - to the Captain.

“Miss ĺde, I can’t sleep…”

ĺde jumped a little, turning left to where her latticed door to the courtyard garden was open a crack. She thought she’d locked it, but evidently not: the little Prince Edward stood there on the threshold in his night smock, rubbing his eye. His chest rose and fell heavily. 

“Your Highness,” ĺde said and rose from her stool. She set her brush aside. “Do your parents know you’re wandering about like this? I’m surprised you found your way here at all.” Though surprised by the boy’s sudden attachment to her, she didn’t have the heart to reprimand him. “We should get you back in bed,” she said and pulled on her robe, walking over to him. 

“But I can’t sleep,” he repeated in a whine.

“And what did you think I would be able to do about it, hmm?” she chided gently.

“Maybe show me more of your magic?”

ĺde sighed. “Who knew there’d be two of us who never sleep.” Maybe she could amuse him for a little while, maybe lull him back into drowsiness the same way a lullaby would. “Come here, then. Just for a little while.” She ushered him farther inside and prepared to close the door behind him, but stopped when she heard voices. 

“I would keep your distance if I were you, Captain De Leon.”

“I’m not sure I understand, Madame.”

“From my daughter,” she clarified. 

ĺde peered through the carvings of her door into the courtyard, after a moment’s search spotting her mother and Captain De Leon in the shadows opposite, near the fountain. She frowned, not understanding either. Beside her, Prince Edward fell quiet and hung on to her leg and listened, too.

“I appreciate your service to the royal family and to us, Captain. Believe me when I tell you this is for your own good - keep your distance. There are things you do not know and are better off not knowing.”

“I wasn’t aware I was getting too close, Madame Suliman,” the Captain said and placed his hands behind his back.

She sighed, then, and murmured something ĺde couldn’t make out. “Just trust me, Captain. We wouldn’t want you to end up like your father, would we?”

ĺde was surprised by the quickness of the Captain’s retort, and its ferocity. “With due respect, Madame Suliman, my father has nothing to do with this.”

“Actually your roads are incredibly similar, I’d say,” Madame Suliman remarked. ĺde was confused by the amusement in her voice. “He lost his life by getting too close to the flame. Sadly that’s what you get when you bargain with demons and lack the skill to tame them.”

“You are testing my patience, sorceress,” he said, so low ĺde nearly didn’t hear. She nearly stepped outside to resolve the tension, mostly to defend her mother, but before she could do so the Captain was speaking again. “Whatever ‘closeness’ you feel is growing between myself and your daughter should be of little concern or business of yours to begin with, but moreover your logic is shockingly faulty in one crucial way - ĺde is no demon. I’m frankly appalled you would draw such a similarity between one and your own daughter, adopted though she may be.” 

“I never drew it as an insult, nor as mere similarity.”

The garden fell silent; even the splashes of the fountain seemed far away. ĺde rocked back on her heels.

“As I said, I am merely warning you, Captain,” Madame Suliman said, implicitly. “And I advise you to use this knowledge wisely. Goodnight.” Her pages wheeled her away.

The Captain glanced in ĺde’s direction before striding swiftly away in the opposite direction. ĺde barely saw it, barely breathed. She was shaking. 

_ What...what did Mother mean? I...I’m human, a human witch. She said I was simply gifted, not...not a…  _ ĺde took a deep breath and stepped backward, wrapping her arms around herself as though to keep her bones in place. “Demon,” she whispered, not wanting it to make sense. For the first time, she felt horribly cold.

“Miss ĺde?”

It took her several long moments to remember Prince Edward’s presence. He was looking at her worriedly.  _ I have to reassure him, _ she thought.  _ He’s just a child, I - _

“Miss ĺde there’s water…”

ĺde looked down. Water, glowing faintly ice-blue, was coursing off her and rapidly flooding over the floor. It dripped off her face as she trembled, but couldn’t seem to stop it. Her bedroom and the Prince’s pale face grew brighter as her skin glowed.  _ Demon, demon, demon, _ her mind repeated over and over.  _ She lied to you. _ Her whole body was crying; she covered her mouth with her hand to stifle her sobs. Water poured from her in torrents, forming a bowl shape with her as its shallowest point in the center..

Prince Edward made a frightened noise, wading to her vanity stool as the tide rose ever higher, impossibly fast, glowing with magic. It was pouring into the courtyard garden now, coursing out and up into the air in thick streams like the arms of a beast seeking purchase. It rooted in the fountain and it overflowed into the cold garden. A few moments later and the furniture in her room was beginning to float.

“Miss ĺde!” 

ĺde lifted her chin as the water licked at it, opening her eyes. She saw through the chaos of her thoughts just long enough to recognize the child’s scream; he floated on her vanity stool that rocked back and forth in the tide. Then it toppled, and the water slipped over her head. She saw him flailing under the surface, his cheeks puffed out with the effort of holding his already-weak breath, his pale smock billowing like a sail. Though she could breathe in it, she realized he could not. How odd that seemed to her.

Only half-aware of her actions, ĺde flung out an arm and a wave of bright white lightning shot through the water, striking the Prince. He transformed into a bright silver and gold koi, rippling through the water and out of her door and leaving a veil of bubbles in his wake like a shooting star. ĺde blinked lazily under the water that somehow no longer felt much like water; she felt submerged in her magic, in her anger and sorrow all at once like it had poured out of her body and left the rest of her numb and empty as a vessel. She couldn’t remember any of it. She couldn’t remember who she was. But this felt like home, like the womb from which she’d come. As cold, pure, and simple as the sky.

Hair, limbs, robe floated in front of her face. Why was she here? Why did she have a body? Something about a demon, something about a star…

 

* * *

 

At the surge in magical energy Madame Suliman entered the courtyard she’d only recently retired from; there wasn’t even time to summon pages, so she enchanted the wheels of her chair to carry herself out. It could only be ĺde’s magic, since by design they were the only two sorcerers in the palace.

The courtyard was overrun with prehensile streams of water like tendrils of vines seeking light and new anchors; they slapped around like the bodies of snakes, leaving wet belly-marks on the otherwise untouched and dry tile. The fountain had been leeched dry and the pool at its feet had been flooded - waterlilies and koi swam through the night air. Everything was aglow as if reflecting the moon, but the sky was covered in clouds.

Madame Suliman looked at the latticed doors to ĺde’s room knocking against their frames in the current, steady and rhythmic as a heartbeat; the doorway was completely filled by water and ĺde floated framed within it, a figure almost completely of pulsing light. She hadn’t felt ĺde’s raw power like this since the time she’d harnessed her.

“You kept the truth from me.”

Madame Suliman realized that, oddly, it was the water that had spoken, and in the next breath that ĺde must have overheard her conversation with the Captain.

“What have you done with my memory?”

Madame Suliman reached out a hand and placed in on the writhing surface of the nearest tendril of water, detected the anger and pulled away. She sighed and frowned. She supposed this day was overdue - she’d have to rein ĺde in and redouble her efforts to keep her contained, if she wanted any hope of maintaining her as a source of power.

ĺde was pacing into the courtyard now, the tapered bulb of water that surrounded her moving with her just as a flame moves with its coal. Her eyes were open under the water, unblinking, bright blue-green like loose gemstones.

“You said I fell.”

“You fell when I told you to fall,” Madame Suliman said. She raised a hand and a luminous cloud of fuchsia-colored magic seeped from it. She shouted at the water magic more than the shell that was ĺde’s body, “No matter what you are, you are mine.” 

Madame Suliman’s magic flew forward and consumed the courtyard, painting the water red upon impact. She was met with resistance but Madame Suliman knew ĺde too well - most of the water soon sizzled and evaporated, while the rest splashed onto the ground and back into the decorative pool, or retreated back to the young woman. ĺde had raised both hands too, attempting to push back but soon her elbows were bent and she was defending herself instead. Madame Suliman gave it a last surge and the fuchsia cloud snapped shut around ĺde like a trap. Like a door had been closed, she felt abruptly cut-off from the reservoir of magical power ĺde provided. The strange silence it created in her mind, the uncomfortable laziness of her blood, was something she hadn’t felt in years.

Madame Suliman gave a sigh of relief and pushed her chair forward toward the prism of her own making. “That’s quite enough of that.” 

She couldn’t have ĺde betray her and insodoing, put her position at risk. Though trapped now, it wouldn’t be long before she was able to break out - she had to weaken ĺde and keep her weak until she had enough strength to both release her and improve the amnesia charms placed upon her - she hadn’t realized they were weak enough to be broken so easily as by overhearing a conversation. She’d have to add denial into the mix next time. 

Madame Suliman pointed at the prism with one finger, shot at it with a bullet of green. The prism turned lilac, shuddered and cracked in several places. The leftover water on the ground and dampening ĺde’s doors instantly froze into deep-winter ice. With a sweep of her hand the prism broke apart into four chunks gleaming from within, hovering in midair. Madame Suliman pointed East, then West, then North, then South, each piece obeying her in turn - they shot out of the courtyard and across the city like amethyst-colored comets. She had not sent them far, only far enough to divide ĺde’s energy enough to make struggle useless.

This done, Madame Suliman sank back tiredly in her chair. She watched the ice creep slowly out into the courtyard like softening ripples, chilling the night air even more and leaving the residue of ĺde’s magic everywhere. She glanced down at a fish flopping at her feet and with a somewhat annoyed flick of her wrist, sent it sailing back into the pond with a  _ plop _ ; shortly the pond developed a thin layer of ice over its surface, locking it shut. Madame Suliman wheeled herself back into her chambers to rest.

 

* * *

 

Tristan set aside the boots he’d buffed and shined perhaps too intensely in the last hour, and moved on to sharpening his sword. Simple repetitive tasks such as this, in the firelight in the solitude of his room, helped him focus - be it on thinking or the exact opposite. 

He’d tried denying Madame Suliman’s words to himself - about ĺde being a demon. The more he thought about it, though, the more he realized that he had always known, and the anger he felt at himself for allowing such a thing to enter the palace grew and grew. He felt taken in by a cheap trick; he had begun feeling a sense of genuine friendship with ĺde beyond his own needs for information and now all of it seemed like an elaborate ruse on her part and he was angry at her. The fact that he had indeed stepped down the same path as his father, in that sense, made his shame worse.

But then, he reminded himself that it was possible that ĺde did not know of her own nature. After all, her memory was silk-thin at best and now Tristan wasn’t so sure that it wasn’t part of Madame Suliman’s plan - what better way to keep a demon on a leash than to make it forget it ever was one, to make it think itself mere mortal? 

Tristan paused in his careful scrape of the stone over his blade. 

To what end, though? Why would an already-powerful sorceress need a demon? Why keep it as close as a daughter? Why give it human form at all? It almost felt like ĺde had never existed - that all this time, he had danced with a mirage - one that he was only beginning to like. He resented the whole business but moreover, had to decide what to do with this confession of Madame Suliman’s. ĺde - whatever she was - had never posed any danger to the court, and yet her ‘mother’ had warned him to stay away all the same. Surely that suggested something unsavory?

Tristan frowned more deeply and sheared the stone down the sword’s length, turned it over, repeated. It glinted in the light from the fireplace in front of him. 

_ “Do you remember him?” _ he remembered Prince Edward asking her.

_ “Strangely, yes,” _ he remembered her answering, and how she’d smiled up at him, eyes like twilight. 

_ The demon ĺde… _

Loud knocks on his door startled him. “Captain!” it was the voice of his second-in-command, Lieutenant Arnold. “Captain, it’s urgent.”

Tristan set his sword and stone to one side, and hurried to his door. On the other side stood the tall, redheaded figure of Arnold, nearly filling the doorframe and tipping his head downward a little as a result in order to say, “Sir, Prince Justin’s son, Prince Edward, is missing. The royal families are gathering in the King’s parlor and he has requested your presence.”

Tristan was already darting back into his room to sheath his sword and attach the scabbard to its belt, slinging it around his waist. He wasn’t in uniform exactly but this was too urgent to do anything more than grab his jacket on the way out. 

“Report,” he quipped, pulling his door to behind him. 

“I’ve already taken the liberty of organizing search parties - the palace guard are being woken as we speak and assembled - I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Good, thank you.”


	4. Tristan's Curse

**Chapter 4: Tristan’s Curse**

 

They walked quickly, every so often breaking into a jog. Servants were lighting all the lamps. Tristan was grateful he’d decided to stay in his resting room in the palace tonight rather than retire to his quarters off-grounds; it took them only a few minutes to reach the east wing, which was devoted to the royal family’s private chambers. The parlor was the first room they came to and its gilded doors stood open.

“Your Majesty,” Tristan said as he strode into the room, snapping into a quick salute. “I came as soon as I heard.”

The Princesses were on the settee comforting one another, Prince Justin behind them pacing anxiously; the King and Queen stood nervously together. Each of them were still dressed in nightclothes and robes, and the women’s hair in loose braids that glimmered in the lamplight. A butler stood to one side with untouched tea. 

“Lieutenant,” Tristan addressed the other guard in the room. “You are to devote two search teams per wing - check every room - and another three to the grounds outside. Send another down to the basement and work upward. Go.” The Lieutenant saluted and rushed from the room. He turned to Princess Beatrice next. “Madame, I take it the last you saw your son was in his bed?”

She nodded fitfully, and dark curls danced over her forehead. “I thought he was asleep…”

“Rest assured, your Highness, we will find him. Perhaps he has gone sleepwalking - in which case, he can’t have gone far.” He hoped his words sounded more reassuring than he felt they were. It was very unusual for a member of the royal family to have gone completely unseen by the staff. Although reluctant to speak to her again so soon, he realized Madame Suliman might be able to help them. “Lieutenant Arnold and I will go to the top floor and seek the Royal Sorceress’ advice. Perhaps she has a way of seeing him that we do not. Please remain here - we will report back as soon as we can.” He and Arnold saluted and left the warm light of the room for the cold hallway, their footsteps echoing behind them.

The top floor of the palace was still mostly dark; it consisted for the most part of the Sulimans’ rooms, the garden, and an observatory and library. It was far quieter here, too. They took the carpeted marble stairs two at a time. 

“You may as well go ahead and search the observatory-library, Arnold,” said Tristan when they reached the top, gesturing left. “I’ll wake the Sulimans.” They separated. 

Tristan grew uneasy as he approached ĺde’s door, which was first - mostly because of how unusually cold the area was. He paused, puzzled, when he trod in a suspiciously large puddle. He knocked, called for her, but there was no answer. Tristan frowned - ĺde hardly ever slept. Much as he had teased her, he had known the answer all along. He knocked again, tried the door and found it icy-cold - frost melted under his hand. The door wouldn’t budge. He decided to go via the courtyard instead.

Tristan was enveloped by the darkness of the internal corridor; he grazed his fingertips over one cold wall to orient himself. In that darkness his uneasiness bloomed into something larger than worry for the young prince. 

_ Demon, demon, demon… _ a frozen door, a silence.

His steps had quickened to a jog without him realizing. He burst into the corridor and stopped short, nearly slipping on the ice that coated most of it. His eyes went immediately to ĺde’s room on the left, where a large drift of ice had frozen open the lattice doors and climbed the walls, spilled out over the plants and consumed the pond. He’d never seen anything like it.

“ĺde?” he called, and made his way quickly and carefully forward in the half-light, wishing for stars.

Her bedroom looked as though a tide had swept through it, and then frozen over. Furniture was toppled, linens starch-stiff with ice matted together, jewelry and trinkets scattered like sunken treasure, icicles dangling from the light fixtures - the orchid terrarium he had often glimpsed her tending was smashed to pieces among the folds of the dress she’d worn that evening. ĺde herself was nowhere to be seen and the notion of her whereabouts being for once unknown to him...

“ĺde!” he called, an unfamiliar panic tightening his throat. He ducked back out into the courtyard garden to make sure he hadn’t overlooked anything. His heart began to beat faster.

“My daughter is missing, Captain.”

Tristan jerked to a stop at Madame Suliman’s voice - strangely bereft of the worry her words would suggest. She sat in her wheelchair just outside her room with a blanket in her lap; magic wheeled her forward.

Tristan scrutinized the older woman, whose face remained impassive. “ĺde -”

“Is not here,” Madame Suliman said. She leveled a challenging stare at him. 

Tristan glanced again at the thrown-open doors riddled with faintly-glowing ice. He readjusted his footing and when his boot nudged something, he looked down - among similar, smaller shards was a large ingot of amethyst. He picked it up to examine and saw it was internally fractured - no, not a fracture or natural inclusion.

_ Hair.  _ An unmistakable, shorn strand of it like a seam of gold. 

Tristan closed his fist around its chill, looked sharply up at Madame Suliman. He had no proof, but somehow he knew. Not normally a man to go on instinct alone, he was surprised to hear himself growling, “What have you done?”

“My daughter is missing, Captain,” she merely repeated, drawing out each word, ‘and will be so for some time. I highly doubt you will find her. And before you ask: no, I cannot see the Prince - I suggest you focus your efforts there, where they belong.”

The sharp edges of the gem cut into his palm as he clenched it harder; its cold had not dissipated and it burned him. “Where is she?” he shouted.

She tilted her head. “Suddenly so interested, Captain? I thought she was merely a means for you to keep an eye on me? Hasn’t worked out so well for you, has it?” She resettled. “I thought you would have been happy that for there to be one less of us for you to worry about.”

“When the King hears of this -”

“Don’t bother. Do you really think your words will stand against mine?”

“Maybe not, Madame Suliman, but two testimonies will be hard to ignore.”

Tristan turned around to see Arnold stepping into the courtyard. He was frowning and briefly, contrastingly, Tristan wanted to smile a little. Arnold looked at him and opened his mouth to speak, but in the next moment a bolt of green light struck him. Arnold keeled backward with a grunt and Tristan reached for him, watching in horror as the huge man shrunk impossibly fast like a popped balloon. Before Tristan could blink he was looking at a wooden nutcracker in the shape of a soldier that tottered on its base before falling to the ground. 

Tristan reeled on Madame Suliman, teeth bared. The wind was knocked from him as he too was struck with green light that rapidly vanished. He looked down at his body - he wasn’t shrinking or changing in any way like Arnold had. He took a step forward and felt abruptly winded and weak. He heaved great breaths in and out, his mouth suddenly like cotton and his throat parched. He wiped a hand against his jaw and panicked to feel how papery they both felt - he held up his hand and couldn’t help but give a noise of alarm to see how his skin puckered and wrinkled, little pieces of skin coming loose as if from a healed sunburn. 

“Your body feels like a desert, doesn’t it? I thought it apt. So... _ invested _ in ĺde, a water demon. What a peculiar thirst,” Madame Suliman said. 

He tried to take a step forward, to draw his sword, but the action made his innards move in unpleasant ways and his skin suck inward against his bones; the dehydration intensified and he coughed, falling to one knee and holding himself up by his sword. He dropped the crystal he held, and it took a couple of attempts to pick it up. It was a chunk of barely-melting ice in his palm and he wanted to swallow it. He didn’t want to, but cast a quick, desperate glance at the frozen-over pond.

“If you heed no other advice from me, heed this, Captain: the closer you get to me the closer you are to being nothing more than dust. No amount of water can help you now.”

She advanced, he retreated, pulled himself to his feet despite how much it felt like his bones were being sapped of their marrow. Tristan wasn’t stupid - he knew he couldn’t do much in this condition. He tried to speak but his voice came out as little more than an old man’s death rattle. And the way his condition worsened the closer she got to him the more he saw the truth in her words. He wouldn’t be able to do anything with a curse on his back.

Tristan stumbled out of the courtyard and back into the hall as Madame Suliman drove him out merely by drawing closer and intensifying the curse upon him. He knew his only hope was to find a witch or wizard comparable enough to the Royal Sorceress to remove it - and there were none in the palace - who knew how long he would last otherwise, to say nothing of restoring Arnold and finding ĺde and Prince Edward.

 

* * *

 

Sophie gently pulled the door to Morgan’s room behind her, leaving it open a crack that cast a band of light down to the foot of the little bed where he slept.

“I still don’t see why we have to have them over for dinner,” Howl continued, wandering down the hall. 

She supposed she should be grateful for his learned ability to keep his voice down at night, even if the words themselves could use a little work. “Howl Jenkins,” she teased, “are you still jealous after five years?”

“There’s no need for me to be, I promise you.”

Sophie didn’t quite believe him, but let it go. She smiled. “You know how it important it is to me that Morgan be exposed to other children his age.” 

“I know, and if it’s important to you it will be done,” he said with a theatrical flourish and a bow as she came into the kitchen.

Sophie giggled at him and pulled out her chair, sitting heavily in it. Howl sat opposite her and pulled her feet into his lap, rubbing her tired ankles and her sore calves through her thick winter stockings. She sighed contentedly and rested her head on the back of the chair. “You aren’t half bad sometimes.”

A furious knock sounded on their door. There was only a short pause before it sounded again, weaker.

Sophie looked at Howl, her eyebrows drawing downward. “We’re not expecting anyone, surely? It’s quite late.” She sat forward and drew her feet back to the floor.

A single loud  _ bang _ of a knock, then a very weak tap and the sound of a heavy weight slumping against the door and sliding downward.

“It’s from the Ingary side,” Calcifer chimed in from the hearth. “Better get it before Morgan wakes up.”

Howl walked quickly to the door, twisted the dial to Ingary’s yellow, and then unbolted it. He opened it far less cautiously than Sophie would have liked and upon doing so, stepped neatly to one side as a body fell into the stairwell, breathing heavily. 

“Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed and stood. Her hands shot to her mouth. 

“Is he dead?” Calcifer asked and grabbed himself more wood, chewing on it and beginning to glow brighter.

Howl knelt in the exaggerated shadows and, after some maneuvering, slung an arm over his shoulder and hauled a man to his feet. A cerulean jacket with ruby epaulettes was about his shoulders.

_ A soldier,  _ Sophie realized and rushed forward to help. She hesitated for a moment when the man managed to raise his head - his face in the light was withered somewhat, like an old man’s or the leaves of a thirsty tree, though he was obviously around the same age as she. His breathing rattled out of him and disturbed his disheveled brown hair; he was only just about managing to put one foot in front of the other to get up the short flight of stairs.

“Haven’t we had enough cursed people in here by now?” Calcifer said.

“Captain De Leon,” Howl was chipper as always, “wasn’t expecting you to drop by. Something to drink, perhaps?”

Sophie gave him a quick look of warning as she took the Captain’s other side and helped him over to one of their armchairs in front of the fire. As soon as he was there she darted back into the kitchen proper to find a glass. “It’s a curse? Are you sure?”

“Seems so,” Howl said, “Though I can’t quite make out the handiwork…” he trailed off for a moment. “Regular water won’t work, Sophie,” he called over the armchair. “I’ll be back momentarily with something more sophisticated.” He paced away to the stairs, presumably to fetch a potion.

Sophie stopped short with the glass, feeling her frown etch itself deeper. She set it aside and after a moment’s thought, rummaged in a drawer and procured a notepad and a pencil before hurrying to the Captain. She knelt beside the armchair, helped him sit upright. 

“It’s all right - we’ll help you,” she said. 

She’d never met him before and couldn’t imagine how Howl knew him, much less why he’d be cursed. She still knew so little of it and yet to her untrained eye this seemed a work of some skill. The Captain eyed her tiredly with astonishingly sad brown eyes, his chest heaving, but his chapped lips couldn’t utter a word.

“Here,” she took one of his hands and pressed the pencil into it, helping him position it on the paper. “Can you write? Who did this to you?”

The Captain managed, after a couple of attempts, to write the name ‘Suliman’. It was followed in a few attempts by the words ‘find daughter’. 

Sophie looked up at him. “Daughter?” Howl’s footsteps trotting down the stairs had her looking up. “He said it was Suliman who did this to him.”

“Sadly that doesn’t surprise me,” Howl said as he joined them. “Here we are Captain - I trust you don’t mind that we don’t stand on ceremony, and you drink straight from the bottle.” He helped the Captain drink from a small, squat purple bottle that reeked of mint and aniseed. “It won’t lift your curse but it should enable you to speak at least, and give you back some strength. Drink it all.”

The bottle was drained; Sophie withdrew the pencil and paper, and then herself, to sit on the hearth beside Calcifer and wait. Howl stood upright and backed away a couple of steps.

“Give yourself a moment,” Howl advised.

The Captain coughed once, dryly, then the second cough was wetter. His breathing became more even, and he ran a leathery hand over his face - Sophie watched as it regained a little more substance and youth. He raised his eyes to them, spoke slowly and softly at first but with growing urgency, “ĺde - I...I was looking for Prince Justin’s son, Edward, and in the process I discovered that ĺde - Madame Suliman’s daughter - was missing too. I confronted Madame Suliman and she cursed me. I can’t go near her. Please - I need your help.”

“Little Edward is missing?” Sophie asked, a mother’s dread rooting itself in her gut.

The Captain assented. “I was called only an hour or two ago - there’s a chance he’s simply lost in the palace - but ĺde -”

“So it’s true; there  _ is _ a ‘Daughter’ Suliman,” Howl said. 

Sophie frowned at his skeptical tone. “Why don’t you sound convinced of it, somehow?”

She was surprised when Howl simply looked at the Captain with a knowing smile, and waited for the Captain to supply the answer himself.

“Not a daughter by blood,” the Captain said at length. He seemed very reluctant to add, “Not a daughter at all.” His voice dropped even lower. “A demon.”

Sophie’s head felt very groggy all of a sudden with all this new information. “Wait, why would Madame Suliman pretend that a demon is her daughter in the first place? To say nothing of a demon taking human form. And furthermore, if you confronted her that must mean you suspect her of something, surely? But why would she be involved in her own daughter disappearing? I don’t understand.”

“Seems the palace has kept many secrets from us,” Howl added and folded his arms. Sophie wasn’t fond of his derisive tone but had to admit her sympathy was being replaced by a similar skepticism. 

“I didn’t know,” the Captain said, and then repeated it more softly to himself and hung his head. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a chunk of amethyst-like stone, balling it in his fist. Sophie noted with interest that a few drops of water squeezed through the gaps in his fingers and rapidly sunk into his dry skin. “When I confronted Madame Suliman she did not seem concerned about ĺde - she told me quite flatly that she was missing and ‘would be for some time’. She said it was highly unlikely that I’d find her - like that was what she wanted.” He coughed.

Sophie looked at Howl, found him casting a wary glance at Calcifer as he grew thoughtful. After a moment’s quiet she stood, laid a hand on the Captain’s shoulder. “I’ll make you some tea.”

“It won’t do any good, Soph’,” Howl murmured as she passed.

She smiled at him. “Tea does more than quench a thirst.”


	5. Clues

**Chapter 5: Clues**

 

“You cannot lift this curse?” she heard the Captain ask Howl.

“Not on my own, at least, I don’t think. Curses aren’t meant to be broken by just anyone or anything.”

As Sophie filled the kettle she reflected on the circumstances that had brought her here to begin with - a curse of her own, which indeed could not be broken by just anything. She watched Howl’s shadow move over the wall, over her, and turned to it with kettle in hand. She could see the Captain’s hand hanging over the arm of the chair, how it still clenched that amethyst and how earlier, his hand had so readily absorbed the water.

“Then what will?” the Captain asked.

“Perhaps the daughter can,” Sophie suggested. She walked back to them and hooked the kettle over Calcifer to heat.

“You said she was a demon?” Howl said.

After a moment’s hesitation the Captain agreed. 

Howl chuckled and Calcifer joined in. Sophie sighed loudly.

“Forgive me but I don’t see what’s so amusing about this,” said the Captain.

“It’s only that we’re stunned that Madame Suliman would make such a bargain so late in her career!” Howl said. “What is this demon, then? A fire in her hearth? An undying candle?”

Sophie eyed the Captain’s displeased expression. “Howl, please,” she said under her breath.

“‘This demon’ is ĺde, the Witch of the Waters,” he nearly growled, and it descended into a cough. “Are you trying to tell me demons are only fire spirits? That Madame Suliman lied about that, too?”

“First of all,” Howl said, putting his laughter away but not his smug smile, “demons are actually fallen stars.”

“And not all stars burn hot,” Calcifer finished. He reached out and dragged a couple more pieces of kindling for himself and continued to rub the belly of the kettle. “So Madame Suliman ain’t lyin’.”

“So you’re saying stars can burn...cold? I don’t -”

“Ever had frostbite?” Howl said. “Rare yes, and their abilities differ from fire demons like Calcifer here,” Howl gestured at him. “A water witch, eh?” He nodded in the direction of the ingot the Captain clenched, and held out his hand for it.

Though initially reluctant to part with it, the Captain handed it over. Sophie couldn’t help herself; she took a step closer to Howl to lean on his shoulder and look at it with him. A pale lilac-blue whose facets had a faint silvery sheen, and she saw moisture coming away on Howl’s fingertips that she swore had a faint glow to it. Inside it was a roughly-shorn lock of gold hair. When she reached out to touch it, she realized it was as cold as an ice cube.

Howl sighed contentedly. “Here we go. This should give us some answers.”

“I retrieved it from the floor outside her room, where I confronted Madame Suliman,” said the Captain. “There was ice everywhere.”

“Hm, well I do recognize Madame Suliman’s handiwork here,” said Howl as he examined the ingot, seeing something only he could see. “She’s basically frozen the de- I mean, rather,  _ Miss _ Suliman’s magic with her own. We find more of this,” he tossed it, caught it, “we find Miss Suliman.” Without ceremony, he tossed the ingot into Calcifer’s fire.

“Geez that’s cold!” Calcifer said and made a few more gasps as he tried to wrap himself around it. Sophie was surprised to see that not only was the ingot not melting, but it was glowing bright like a piece of the moon. Calcifer began to gnaw on it thoughtfully under the anxious gaze of the Captain.

“What I’m curious about is how Madame Suliman managed to harness a fallen star to begin with, but I suppose we won’t know that until we can speak with the star herself,” Howl continued. “One typically needs seven-league boots and I wasn’t aware she had enough power at her age to use another method.”

The Captain breathed deeply, coughed. “Why bother to begin with?”

Sophie used the hem of her overdress to take the kettle off its hook and bring it back to the kitchen to make the tea. “Bargaining with a fallen star has many benefits to a witch or wizard - presumably Madame Suliman wanted more power of a kind.”

“Or it was something the star wanted, too,” Calcifer added.

“No. I don’t believe ĺde even knows what she is.”

“What gave you that impression?” Sophie called.

“It’s obvious to everyone that knows her - her memory is extremely limited,” the Captain said between coughs. “She believes herself to be Madame Suliman’s adopted daughter, merely a human witch with an affinity for water elements. She told me.”

The Captain stood and took a few paces away, leaning on whatever was closest for support with one hand while beating his chest with the other as he descended into a deeper bout of coughing. Sophie hurried with the tea and brought it to him. 

“Then that’s part of her ‘mother’s plan, too,” said Howl as he sat in the other armchair and propped his feet on the hearth. “I’m sure she would have revolted if she knew the truth - Madame Suliman must know that. And to suddenly hide the star when before now, there were no problems, means things were suddenly  _ not _ problem-free. Maybe ĺde found out the truth some kind of way.”

After a moment’s consideration the Captain sighed deeply and wiped his hand over his face, let it hang there on his jaw as he said, “Our conversation. She must have overheard the conversation between myself and Madame Suliman.”

“Well whatever it was,” said Calcifer, “All this back-and-forth isn’t doing you much good, Captain. Whatever potions we whip up here can only stave off the curse - eventually you’re going to shrivel into dust and blow away in the wind.”

Sophie felt her heart begin to race again. “You’re joking?”

“Not all curses are static,” Calcifer said and, she was sure, would have shrugged if he was able. “Luckily, we’ve got a heads-up on finding her.” He chewed on the ingot in his hearth, now a bright purple in the midst of his flame and barely melted, “Give me a few more hours and we can start making some moves.”

 

* * *

 

The house finally grew quiet and dark - even Calcifer, Howl’s fire demon, had vanished into his own glow. At last Tristan felt alone, at last it felt safe to let down his guard. It took him a few stiff minutes but eventually he managed to remove his boots.

He sighed deeply, barely disguising a small moan of pain as he brought his legs up and laid on the daybed under the stairs they’d provided for him. His joints - no, even the marrow of his bones - ached, and no matter how much he drank of the tea or water or potion Sophie had left for him he couldn’t be rid of the scratchiness of his throat, the papery feel to his skin or the sensation of his organs moving and shrinking in ways they shouldn’t. His eyes burned but he had no tears to water them. He knew he had to try and rest but even without the curse he knew he’d scarcely be able to.

Rapid soft footsteps on the stairs above him had him attempting to sit back up, but giving up. Sophie swept into the kitchen with a hissed ‘sorry’, as she emptied two glasses and refilled them with fresh water. She walked back toward the stairs more carefully, but paused before she ascended.

“Try not to worry,” she said.

Tristan managed a weak smile.

She hesitated, then said, “If you don’t mind me asking, Captain: what is your personal investment in ĺde? Surely it’d be to your advantage to have Madame Suliman weakened, if you dislike her as much as you seem to? Or do I have it all wrong, and you wish to restore her?”

Oddly, the question took Tristan aback somewhat. He managed to raise himself on one arm so as not to look like a sick child to her, despite his arm feeling like it wanted to break. “I wish to bring the Royal Sorceress to justice, no matter my personal feelings about her. As for ĺde…”

But he couldn’t continue. He did not know. He didn’t know why it mattered so much to find her, beyond her possible lifting of his curse. That wasn’t entirely it of course because as a Captain of the Guard, if fulfilling his duty to the King and warning him of the unsavoriness of Madame Suliman’s actions were his only concern, he could have remained in the palace and gone directly to the King, even if it had cost him his own life. 

“I suppose…” he began in a hoarse whisper, “if her own ‘mother’ betrayed her, it seems as though I will be the only ally she has. The only one that knows the truth, and the only one who knows what happened to her and who will find her in spite of the truth. It would feel dishonorable not to do something.” Yes. Yes that was it. He was an honorable man - of course that was why he was doing this. He cleared his throat as best he could, frowning, “And besides, she may have information about Prince Edward’s whereabouts.”

Sophie looked unconvinced, but luckily didn’t call him out on it and smiled instead. “Well, she’s lucky to have you coming to find her. Goodnight.” Her footsteps padded back up the stairs.

Tristan dropped onto his back and listened to the rattle in his chest. It obscured his heartbeat and somehow that was more alarming than anything else - if he could hear it, perhaps he could get to sleep, could get through the night, could get up in the morning. He reflected that ĺde was like that, too. So simple a thing, her presence, and when he couldn’t see her his world seemed to turn into noise, into a chaos that he wasn’t sure - for once - that he could find his way through. He wanted things to return to how they were.

_ Tristan was hopping off the wagon that brought him from the city of Ingary to the countryside, where his father lived. He was twelve. He waved reluctantly to the grain farmer as he snapped his reins and drove the cart onward down the road, singing to his mule. Tristan watched him go, listened to the empty rattle of the cart wheels on the potholed dirt road echo away into the sunshine over the bright yellow rapeseed fields.  _

_ Though he didn’t want to, he began the trek to his father’s house through the narrow, clod- and stone-filled alleys between the fields. He was on track to get there by dinner, which his father always ate early so that he could go to bed early, so that he could get up early - none of which Tristan liked. It’d be a month filled with such a schedule, which was a far cry from the lenience of his grandfather in the city where they’d stay up until ‘irresponsible’ hours reading and making shadow puppets. But, he knew this was a duty to be filled. Every summer.  _

_ Nonetheless, he dallied. He’d veer off into the tall stalks of yellow, stop to watch the bees, make detours along fences, take a longer-than-necessary rest at the little stone bridge over the brook, chase after every wild thing he saw. The last leg of the journey was to follow the brook, and rather than walking on the well-worn path along its shore he took off his shoes and tied their laces together to sling them around his neck, strap his pack across his back and roll up the cuff of his pants to wade along through the cool, shallow water. _

_ After half an hour or so, his father’s watermill was in sight, situated strategically on the slight rise at the edge of the forest to make the most of the downward rush of the water into the floodplain. He climbed out of the brook and dried his calves and feet with his linen trousers and socks, and put his shoes back on. Dusk was beginning, and smoke was rising from the chimney of the little house attached to the mill and reaching toward the crescent moon and the pole star. _

_ When he reached it, his father’s hunting hound, Digger, raised his head and stared at him blandly from the porch before rolling onto his other side - just as well, since he and Tristan didn’t much like each other. The front door was open.  _

_ “Pa, I’m here,” called Tristan, trying to try.  _

_ “You’re late,” came his father’s quiet, tired voice from inside.  _

_ It was getting harder, and this was partially why. Tristan lingered on the porch with its heavy, overgrown coat of honeysuckle and wisteria, breathing their scents steadily in to try to push down the lump in his throat. What would his birthday be like this year, he wondered? Another day of waking up in the house alone purely out of the mercy of being allowed to sleep in while his father went out to his fields? At least he had a week or so to steel himself for the disappointment.  _

_ “Be sure and take off your shoes,” his father called as Tristan took off his shoes, “I just swept yesterday. You can help me turn the mattresses and then we’ll see about feeding you.” _

_ Tristan kept his eyes downcast, not wanting to see his father just yet, as he came inside and set down his pack by the door. His shoes were left outside beside his father’s larger brown farm boots. The other side of them were his mother’s blue ones, still clean and fresh-looking as if she was merely upstairs somewhere rather than five years in the grave. Just like her cup was still on the drainboard, just like her shawl was still on the hook beside his father’s coat, just like her needlework was still on her rocking chair in which he wasn’t allowed to sit, just like the clock stopped on the mantle.  _

_ The familiar weight, like a strangely pleasant sickness - like the weight of the vines on the roof of the porch - settled on Tristan’s shoulders and he prepared himself for a summer of unspoken yet ever-present memories. He felt like a fly compelled to enter the sap that would trap him in amber.   _

_ The dream shifted - above him, and rapidly, the wisteria and honeysuckle grew through the front doorway into the house. It covered the ceiling and crept down the walls, entwining themselves together and through the furniture, displacing the modest pictures and knick-knacks. It swam over the floor like a living rug and washed everything in green, white, yellow, and lilac. Tristan raised his hands and saw that rather than those of a child, they were those of his adult body - the vines raced up his legs and torso and covered him in soft leaves and sweet-smelling blooms that caressed his cheeks. He closed his eyes.  _

_ The house creaked and groaned, and he could no longer hear his father’s voice. Walls fell, the roof was lifted away, the floor trembled until it descended into the earth; Tristan opened his eyes as the vines released him and he saw their possessions floating on a river of foliage and flowers. He was now in the Iron Valley, a glacier-run to the north of Ingary that sported steep, black stone walls and snow-capped peaks; the vines stretched away over the turquoise-blue-white of the glacier, unaffected by the cold.  _

_ He could see the vines racing for a figure, so far in the distance it was little more than a red notch carved into the black stone of the valley. A freezing wind cuffed his ears but through it, still he heard ĺde’s voice echoing: “Please find me.” _


	6. The Eastern Visage

**Chapter 6: The Eastern Visage**

 

When Tristan woke, at first he wasn’t sure where he was. Then when he moved his tongue to lick his chapped lips, and found it dry as straw, he remembered. The cough was painful and came up in one huge burst before he could get his hand over his mouth - when he felt something wet splatter into his palm he was briefly hopeful until he saw it was blood. He sat up and his already-aching head hurt as he leaned over to drink some of the water that had been left for him - anything. He could barely bring the glass to his mouth, he was coughing so much.

“You sound like death,” said Calcifer from his hearth nearby.

Tristan barely heard him. There were speckles of light dancing in his eyes. Worst still was when he glanced at the bed and saw off-white shavings of dry skin on the pillow and sheet, along with several loose hairs. He cursed and looked at his hands, felt his face; more flakes of it came away with the lightest touch and now that he was aware of it, his skin began to crawl with the way even the fine threads caught on it. He wondered if it was merely dust motes he could see floating in the sunshine coming through the windows.

“You look like it too. Sophie! Howl!” Calcifer called. 

The two of them shortly came from the back room and while Sophie jumped a little in surprise, speaking lowly to someone or something else behind her, Howl laughed. Tristan rolled his eyes.

“Morgan, go into your room for now, okay?” said Howl over his shoulder. “Don’t come out until we say so.”

“Morgan?” Tristan croaked.

“Our son,” Sophie supplied. 

“Looks like you need another potion - I’ll be back,” said Howl. and hurried upstairs. 

“There isn’t anything stronger?” Tristan asked. He tried to pull on a boot - almost too much of a strain already - but stopped when the skin of his fingertips began to tear. 

Sophie rushed to help him. “I’m sure there’s other things we can do. Lotion, maybe,” she winked. She turned to Calcifer, “I hope you have some good news for a change?”

“Somewhat. Good news is - she’s not that far away. Bad news is - there’s four of her,” said Calcifer.

“How is that possible?” Tristan asked, feeling himself deflate even more. He barely knew if he had the energy to stand much less track down four ĺdes. 

“Hey, it was hard enough for me to sense her after chewing on this icecube all night,” Calcifer spat it onto the floor. “I don’t know everything.”

“Calc,” Sophie scolded and picked up the ingot. It was significantly smaller than it was the night before, and now shaped like a flattened oval. One end of ĺde’s hair hung out of it like a silk ribbon, miraculously untouched. She gave it back to Tristan.

“I understand, thank you,” Tristan said. He paused to run his fingers down the lock of hair.  “Please, where is she?” He barely recognized his own voice - it sounded like an old man’s. 

“The closest one is east of here - probably still on the outskirts of the city. After that, next-closest is to the west, maybe around the fruit groves?”

Howl came back downstairs and handed Tristan the same bottle from the previous night; Tristan knocked it back. 

Calcifer continued, “Third one is down south around some kind of water - real strong water element energies so maybe the river.”

“And the fourth to the north, let me guess,” said Sophie, standing and brushing her hands over her skirts.

“Yep.”

“The Iron Valley glacier,” Tristan said without thinking.

“How’d you know?” Calcifer asked, slightly affronted.

Tristan shook his head. “I dreamt it.”

“Seems like Madame Suliman wanted ĺde far enough away to not be able to retaliate, but not so far away that her mother’s power would wane too much,” Howl said, almost appreciatively.

“Well then, how about we have a good breakfast and get started,” Sophie suggested. “We should send for Markl to look after Morgan.” She moved to the kitchen and began collecting various foods out of the cold-box and the pantry.

“I don’t wish to endanger you or take you away from your son, Mrs Pendragon,” Tristan said.

“Nonsense! And it’s just Sophie, please.”

 

* * *

 

They took a carriage to the eastern part of the city, the folding canvas hood drawn up against the chill wind. Tristan was mostly grateful for it on account of not wanting to be recognized by any of Madame Suliman’s lackeys that might have been wandering around, even though Howl had supplied him with a hooded gray cloak. 

Reluctant to give up ĺde’s stone again, Tristan held it in the palm of his open hand. Although a crude and somewhat childish method, they had soon noticed that depending on their direction, the stone either glowed more brightly or dimmed, and it was in this way that they navigated. The journey ended up not being as far as Tristan had thought - it was in a crooked and cramped, run-down suburb that ĺde’s stone began to shine so brightly it hurt to look at.

Howl drew the horse to a halt; Tristan pocketed the stone and though he tried to help Sophie out of the carriage, she ended up helping him more. Howl touched an engraving on the carriage’s side and the entire thing, horse and all, softened into smoke and shrunk until it was nothing more than a bejeweled charm he caught in midair with his gloved hand and gave to his wife.

“A blessing when I was pregnant with Morgan,” Sophie explained and hooked it onto a chain of similar charms she wore as a chatelaine around her waist. She looked around them at the quiet, terracota-colored houses with their shuttered windows. “Here somewhere, then?” 

They scanned the immediate area, little more than an incredibly small plaza with a well that acted as a dead-end to the side-road they’d taken here. Three alleyways broke off of the plaza, and the buildings seemed to lean together over the plaza such that several layers of dead and sprouting vines and saplings that had taken root on the roofs made the entire space very shaded from the already clouded sky. Birds rustled above them.

“Look!” Sophie said, and pointed at one of the apartments on the corner of plaza and alley to their left. In the dimness it wasn’t hard to see the light that shone between the cracks in the shutters and under the front door.

Tristan did not hesitate. Though his body protested he took quick, if stumbling, steps toward the house, using the wall for support with one hand. He heard Sophie and Howl follow. The door, with its peeling green paint, yielded easily under his hand and they stepped inside; he had just enough time to register that they were in a sitting room before they were blinded by a flash of pale green light. There was a huge melodious crash as if a chandelier had fallen to the ground, but when the light faded and Tristan’s eyes eventually adjusted, he could see none.

What he  _ could _ see was that the sitting room had been overrun by a garden. Large shrubs and vines were reclaiming the walls, clover was sprouting among the rugs and between the floorboards. Furniture sat among drifts of roses. Tristan looked through the open doorway to the room beyond and the single window immediately opposite - the room was so full of flowers and foliage that it was difficult to tell its original purpose. 

Crucially, though: a woman sitting in the light of that window, reading. A smile lingered about her mouth. Her head was bowed to look down at the book in her lap and the sun caught the rich blonde of her hair in the chignon at the nape of her neck. She wore a dull olive-colored dress like a servant, her back turned to them. She did not glow like usual and as such, could have been any mortal woman, but he knew the truth.

“ĺde,” Tristan said under his breath. 

For the briefest of moments Tristan caught himself wondering if, had she had a choice, she would have been like this in another life. Would it have made her happy to be a mortal woman reading on a sunny afternoon in her own house, her own garden? It’d never occurred to him before to wonder what would make her happy - or rather, like she’d never been a thing that needed to be made happy. He was a little disappointed in himself at this, but here there was an opportunity to do differently and he was surprisingly glad that there was.

Relief settled on him and strengthened his steps as he strode through the garden toward her. As he got closer he could hear her humming. She seemed so content, but still he asked, “ĺde are you all right?”

She turned to him, startled. Her brow was drawn down and her mouth parted slightly, but her cheeks had more color in them than he’d seen since knowing her. Her eyes were bright as morning dew. “I’m sorry, do we know each other?” 

Tristan was momentarily taken aback. She always recognized him. Even when she needed reminding of others, she always knew who he was. This, unexpectedly, crushed him. He nonetheless came to stand beside her as she gently closed her book, not removing her eyes from him. He noticed with a start that she was reading  _ A Summer of Lions _ \- the same book he had been reading in the rooftop garden not three days ago. 

He refocused. “My name is Tristan De Leon,” he said carefully. “Do you not remember me?” When she did not immediately respond, he added, “From the palace. We work together - I as the Captain of the Guard and you -” But what was she now, really? What had she ever been? “You’re the Witch of the Waters.” He searched her composed face for some element of recognition but found only polite, confused indulgence. “Please -” he took her hand.

At the contact her expression rapidly became one of horror and she let out a startled cry. Her free hand released the book and shot to her mouth; the book fell to the floor as she stood, toppling her chair. The house began to shake, raining petals and leaves, and the sunlight faded.

“ĺde?” Tristan said.

She looked at him, visibly frightened at something other than him. “Captain? Captain I - I remember. I was so happy and then…”

The house shook more and the plants began to shrivel as a frost took over the air. Their breath fogged. ĺde let out a quick gasp of a sob, followed by a moan. Tristan, alarmed by her pain, stepped closer and placed a steadying hand around her. He cast a questioning glance at Howl and Sophie lingering in the doorway but they seemed just as confused.

“And then I was torn out of the sky,” she finished. Tears streaked her face and she was trembling as much as the house.

Something in her words tugged at Tristan’s brain, but he put it aside for later study. “I know and I’m sorry. You’re here now, though. I’m going to help you. I’m here,” he tried to reassure her.

“I was so happy,” she whispered over and over as the plants around grew black and shrunk away. Pieces of plaster came loose from the ceiling and the floorboards began to warp.

Tristan’s heart broke for her. He felt like he was the cause of not just this pain, but her original pain, too. He didn’t know if he could make good on his word - how to help her? He wasn’t accomplished at comforting words or other sentimentalities - nor was he used to ĺde needing them. Would all the other ĺdes be like this, too? 

But he had to try something. The house was collapsing around them. He held onto her to keep them both steady, lowered his head to try to look her in the eye. “What made you happy, ĺde?”

“What?”

“What made you happy?” he repeated. “Tell me. I want to know.”

She held his gaze for a long moment, then looked away thoughtfully, sniffing. “Um.” She wiped her face on the back of one hand, fought down another sob. The trembling of the house subsided a touch. 

He rubbed the stiff wool of her sleeve encouragingly. “What made you happy?”

ĺde pulled her lips into her mouth, chewing on them. After a moment’s hesitation she looked around her and said, “A garden,” and laughed once, anxiously, and wiped away another tear.

Tristan nodded. “Good, good. What else? Tell me.” The trembling subsided more.

Another pause, and then she said, “The smell of the spiced coffee in the morning. And… the color blue.”

Tristan smiled at her, feeling his own happiness bubble along with her own at the images.

“A good book,” she nodded mock-decisively, and tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “Birdsong and clumsy dancing, and the way shadows grow long in the golden hour.”

“All great things, yes,” he nodded again. The air was warming again and the house was still. “And what will make you happy?”

She caught his eye again. “I do not know yet. I never thought I would have a life with  choice.” He recognized that voice - the lilt of sadness disguised with a tease. 

“But if you did?”

Her smile strengthened and the sunshine returned with it. She laughed, and she was radiant. Bright sprigs of green sprouted and began to bloom throughout the room again. But she did not answer. 

Tristan stepped back in surprise as ĺde suddenly froze, and then disintegrated into a billion sparkling droplets of water that crashed to the ground and evaporated immediately. He cursed loudly and stamped a foot before turning angrily to Howl.

“Why didn’t you do anything?” he demanded. “We’ve lost her!”

Howl finally approached. “Calm yourself, Captain! The visage has left us with a token, and that’s all we need.” He plucked the book from the floor and pressed it into Tristan’s hands. “And you already look better. Hopefully we can find the next ĺde before it wears off too much.”

Tristan glanced at his hands, and found to his surprise that they had regained some plumpness and smoothness to them. For the first time since Madame Suliman had cursed him, he could feel saliva in his mouth.


	7. The Western Visage

**Chapter 7: The Western Visage**

 

Reluctantly, Tristan followed Howl and Sophie back through the house and its garden to the outside. It seemed duller out here all of a sudden and not just because of the shade. He felt his heartbeat calm in response and he tried to clamp down on his frustrated thoughts. He was making progress, he tried to tell himself. This was better already than he could have hoped.

He looked at the book in the cracking skin of his fingers. “A token? I don’t understand?”

Sophie was detaching the carriage charm from her chatelaine and tossing it into the street, where a puff of yellow smoke began to reshape itself into the horse and carriage once more. 

Howl answered, “It’s the same principle,” he gestured at the magic beside him. “A star is unbound magic. Just as ĺde had a human body to contain her physically, now she’s physically contained by an inanimate object. If she’s been split into four facets, then there will likely be four items that we can collect together to hopefully reverse the split and restore her to a human body instead. Though,” Howl paused, helped his wife into the carriage, and then looked at Tristan with an odd amount of seriousness, “If you so chose, we could perhaps restore her now, as you saw her in there.”

Tristan didn’t answer, but squinted in confusion. 

“Surely the happy version of her is enough?” Howl elaborated. “There’d be no need to continue the search.”

Tristan cleared his throat - he could already feel his mouth drying up. He considered Howl’s words, thought again about ĺde in her garden with the book and the smile on her face. An ĺde with no sorrow. Wasn’t that enough? 

_ No, _ he realized. “No.”

“No?”

“Because that’s not all she is.” He swallowed, felt the rattle returning to his throat. He made his way forward and climbed into the carriage opposite Sophie. “We continue.”

 

* * *

 

The route to the Banbury Orchards on the western outskirts of town took longer to get to, on account of the trio having to avoid Madame Suliman’s lackeys patrolling the main streets. Although the carriage did not rattle much, Tristan felt his body begin to ache more and more as time went on, as though he was experiencing the onset of a bad cold. There were no potion materials out here, and despite his encounter with the eastern visage of Ide having somehow restored the moisture in his body somewhat, he wondered how long it would take for him to be just as bad - or worse - off as he was this morning.

“The book,” Sophie’s voice intruded into his thoughts. “Do you know why she would have been reading that one in particular?”

He hadn’t considered it - it hadn’t mattered at the time. He looked down at the orangeish-red canvas cover, the gold gilt tumbling over its spine and into the lions falling out of the sun and over the title. “I was reading it not long ago. Beyond that I don’t know.”

“What is it about?”

“I’m not good at summaries,” Tristan said quickly, because that’s what he always said. Because he never wanted to talk about his interests - however innocent they always felt private and silly to outsiders. But perhaps now was time to make an exception - perhaps there was indeed some significance to it. He tried again. “It’s about...a prince. He’s sent by his father, the King, to bring him ten mythical lions for the glory of his palace. The prince plans to use them to kill his father in order to take the throne. Ultimately, though, after achieving this he becomes imprisoned by those same lions until he learns the lessons they have to teach him, which was his father’s plan all along.” He stifled a cough as best he could. “A fable, really.” He added more quietly, “It was my father’s favorite.”

Sophie was looking at him kindly, as if detecting the hidden pain under the statement. “And is it yours?”

“No, but I felt it important. I don’t understand why it was his favorite and I suppose this has bothered me for years.”

“Can’t you ask him?”

Tristan hesitated, realizing he’d volunteered too much. His expression became impassive and he looked out of the carriage window. “He died when I was fifteen.”

“I’m sorry.”

Tristan did not answer. He felt unexpectedly sensitive to the subject despite having over a dozen years to come to terms with it, and did not want to continue opening up an old wound. He continued to stare out at the countryside.

 

* * *

 

The orchards comprised several acres of fruit trees and grape arbors with buds barely pushing through, arranged in concentric circles around a central irrigation pond. Grape presses and barns were on the outside, deserted for the season, and it was amongst these that the carriage stopped.

With difficulty Tristan pulled himself out of his seat and nearly fell out of the carriage; his muscles felt atrophied and his clothes too loose, and every step rattled his teeth. He felt more than saw the carriage dissipate behind him. The late afternoon sun cast a golden veil on the orchards in front of him, and it was into this light that he held out ĺde’s stone - its lilac color gathered an orange sheen, like an ametrine, and glowed bright. He trudged forward to a gap in the orchard circles, and followed a tile-lined irrigation channel inward.

_ How long can I keep this up? _ Tristan wondered as he resisted the urge to scratch at his drying scalp.  _ What if I fail? _

He couldn’t think of that. He had to find the rest of her, had to get back to the palace and free Arnold, bring Madame Suliman to justice - find Prince Edward. There was too much to do, too much relying on him. And he…

“I’m dying,” he whispered to himself. It felt strange acknowledging it - truly - for the first time.

“Sorry?” Sophie asked, a step or two behind him.

“Nothing,” he said.

At the very center of the orchards was a large pond lined with stones like a well, back to which all of the irrigation channels that fed each of the circles flowed. The innermost trees were icy with frost, and motes of snow lingered on the air - the pond itself was iced-over, and icicles hung from the necks and spouts of the silent pumps at the root of each irrigation channel. Waterlilies were frozen perfectly, as if in an instant, where they floated.

Tristan looked around, but could see no sign of an ĺde visage like before. The ingot in his palm was blinding, so he put it in his pocket. She had to be here somewhere. He took a step toward a waterpump for something to lean on.

“Here,” said Howl, and held out an orphan shovel handle, presumably for him to use as a walking stick.

Every fiber of his being wanted to scoff at the suggestion, but Tristan forced himself to accept the stick with a nod of thanks. It wasn’t going to get any better, after all.

“She has to be here somewhere, right?” Sophie asked, looking through the aisles of leafless trees as she rounded the pond.

“She must be,” Tristan said and immediately descended into a hacking cough. 

“The well-pond,” Howl nodded at it. “It’s the only place.”

Tristan propped his stick next to a pump and leaned out over the pond. The ice was a milky blue - not naturally-formed - and its smooth surface was covered with a fine layer of glittering snow. 

“I can’t see anything much less her,” Tristan said. He crouched on the perimeter stones despite his aching joints and, with one hand holding on to the biting cold metal of the pump, leaned farther out and down with his free hand to brush the snow off the surface from between the lilypads. The shadow of the water underneath became more apparent, like a rising bruise on skin.

Something moved under the ice - so faint that Tristan wasn’t sure he’d seen it. He wiped more snow away and watched closely.

“Captain?” The voice was distant.

A face - a face under the ice - ĺde’s face. Looming out of the dark and then recessing back into it. 

Panicked, Tristan let go of the pump and swiped at the snow on the ice with both hands. “She’s here! She’s under the ice! She’s under the ice!” He was wiping his tired forearms over it now - his knees were on the ice - his entire bodyweight - “ĺde!”

He didn’t hear the cracking - was only aware of it when his body jolted. There was an icy splash as he slid face-first through the crystal lilies into the depths. The cold punched the breath out of him and stung his eyes; he thrashed wildly, cursing himself. Millions of bubbles patted his face. He was sinking - he couldn’t remember how to swim. He couldn’t remember anything - the cold strangled all of it out of him like hands wringing him like a cloth. 

The darkness of the well-pond was lit to a deep emerald from the sunlight through the ice above him. It appeared bottomless. Silvery threads of bubbles soared upward from his nose, his clothes, like an undone spiderweb. No matter how much he kicked, though, he couldn’t seem to follow their example. He turned this way and that, thinking he was near enough to the wall to perhaps drag himself up instead. 

Two throbs of light, like slowed-down lightning. Tristan squinted as they faded.

ĺde hung in the center of the well, arms slightly raised by her sides, the glow of her skin making the metallic scales of her gold gown shimmer. Her hair floated loose about her face but her eyes were open, looking at him. Her expression was one of pain. 

_ She’s alive down here? How? She should be drowned. _ Tristan fought through the water toward her - his lungs were screaming at him for air.  _ She isn’t human, _ he reminded himself.  _ She must not need to breathe. _

He’d nearly reached her when she turned her face away, her hair falling over her like a veil, and one hand slowly rose higher. Tristan reached for that hand.

Abruptly, a current began in the hitherto still water. The emerald dark gathered itself, as though breathing in, and spiraled around the walls of the well. Tristan fought against it but it was little use - he was being drawn away from ĺde. What was worse was that this seemed by her design.

The current became so strong that the ice overhead began to break apart; as Tristan struggled to hold his breath he noticed that the water was actually growing warmer. This was of little comfort, however - he was pulled into the riptide that was spinning ever faster around the well’s walls. He could just about see how ĺde remained unmoved in the center, standing on the bottom of the well while the water drew upward above ground, letting in what little sunshine remained. Around her became dry. 

Tristan fought to at least break the surface of the riptide for a breath of the air a scant foot in front of him, but he couldn’t. The water’s momentum kept him under, tumbling him about and striking him repeatedly into the stones.  

 

* * *

 

“Howl we have to do something!” Sophie shouted over the rush of water. She ducked as a lilypad was thrown out of the vortex rising some ten feet out of the wellmouth. “Can you see the Captain? Or ĺde?”

“She’s at the center, Sophie!” Howl said. For her benefit, he explained, “A star will always be at the epicenter of the energies at its disposal. Namely, this,” he gestured at the column of green-blue water sparkling in the sunshine and spraying their thawing surroundings with droplets.

It was marvellous handiwork, really, he had to admit. Although initially trapped by Madame Suliman’s spell - which hijacked ĺde’s own magic, creating the ice - as soon as an outside catalyst was introduced ĺde’s visage was able to overpower it. The ice all around was thawing, and things were growing earlier than they should be. Howl had to wonder what the demon ĺde would be like should she be restored to full power and full memory. It was also, of course, interesting that the Captain should be that catalyst necessary to wake each part of her up. 

“Howl, the Captain!” Sophie shouted irritably. 

“Yes, yes, I know,” he said.

Howl stepped onto the low wall that had once bordered the water, which was becoming more and more overrun by first algae and then moss as each second passed. The water spat at him from where it spiraled mere centimeters from his face. He muttered a spell under his breath and took off his harlequin jacket, tossing it behind him onto the ground. One deep breath later, and Howl stepped into the swirling wall of water.

It took a bit of fighting, but shortly, Howl emerged on the other side in the dry center of the vortex. He carefully brought himself down to the well-bottom where ĺde stood. The Captain was nowhere to be seen. 

ĺde turned gracefully to face Howl. Whether she recognized him or found him threatening, she gave no hint. She, like the ground beneath their feet, was bone-dry - even with the mauve and violet waterlilies caught in her hair - but she looked as though she was going to burst into tears at any moment. This was the exact opposite of the happy visage they’d encountered before - richly-clothed, regal in bearing, rather than the humble peasant in the little house.

_ But I suppose we all gild our tragedies and make wallflowers of our joys _ , Howl reflected. “You’re going to kill a man, Daughter Suliman,” Howl said and nodded to the wall of water around them, where he presumed the Captain was trapped along with all the other contents of the well. “I don’t think that’s what you want.”

“Isn’t it?” her voice was trembling.

Howl hesitated, taken aback.

“You don’t know the truth,” she said.

There wasn’t time for this. “And you don’t know that he loves you,” Howl said. “Though I don’t think he quite knows it yet either. Let him go.”

Her mouth was parted; she blinked a couple of times as though to beat back tears. The despair didn’t lift from her face. “It doesn’t matter. I can never forgive him.”

There wasn’t time for this either. “Not if you don’t let him live to have a chance.” Howl walked to the side of the well. “If he dies, so do you.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is - I should know.” Indeed, this whole scenario was so familiar to him it was almost tasteless. Howl rolled up his sleeves, despite them being sopping wet already. “When a star loses the human that anchors it, they’re both as good as dead.” He plunged his arms up to the shoulder into the riptide, groping around. “Both you and your ‘mother’ have done a good job of substituting her as your anchor, but you’ll never fully replace the original one - the one that caught you to begin with.”

Howl took a risk, and after muttering another spell to weight his lower half, stuck his head into the water. He could only hope ĺde wouldn’t use the opportunity to attack him from behind. It was a struggle, but after a few moments he was able to open his eyes just in time to avoid being struck by the body of a grown man. He missed him, but the second time round he was luckier. The wind was knocked from Howl as the Captain slammed into him; he gripped tight, and pulled.

The two men tumbled backward onto the dusty silt. Howl coughed a couple of times, and then realized that the Captain was not doing the same. Howl looked over at him, saw that many of the signs of dehydration had disappeared.  He wasn’t breathing, though. That was the most important bit.

“Sophie’s going to kill me,” Howl mumbled. He glanced up at ĺde - although her face was contorted in remorse, she did not move. A small breeze made by the vertical tide stirred her hair. “Come here,” he said to her. “You can fix this. Face what hurts.” He felt like he was speaking to a past self.

Howl was under no illusion that ĺde moved because she was listening to him, but she did move nonetheless. Her barefoot steps were slow and couldn’t be heard over the loud gurgling of the water. She knelt beside the Captain; one hand hovered over him as though afraid. Sunlight glinted off the gold lamé pattern on her skirt and dappled the Captain’s damp face.

At last ĺde’s hand came to rest on the Captain’s chest, and no sooner had it done so then he heaved upward, startling them both, and vomited up a fountain of wellwater. A few heaving, retching coughs followed and he fell back to the ground. 

He looked up at ĺde, and then away. His hand dragged itself away from his stomach and rested on her knee. “I was afraid you hadn’t been real,” he said distantly.

After a pause, ĺde said, as if he hadn’t spoken, “Why come here? Why continue? Why not just let me be?” She stood and turned on her heel, walking toward the wall of water.

Clouds gathered overhead, plunging the well into shadow. At ĺde’s delicate wave of one hand the water slowed until it was as still as the sea; she and it were luminous from within, creating an undulating, muted theater of teal shadows and gold ripples. Howl couldn’t tell what she was going to do.

Howl was the first to get to his feet, and helped the Captain to his own. The Captain then moved on his own, stumbling after her. “ĺde, please,” he said.

“No matter how far you chase me, Captain, I cannot forgive you,” she called.

“Forgive me? Whatever it is - tell me for what I need to beg, ĺde,” the Captain pleaded.

Howl found this interesting, too. So the Captain really had no idea? Was it possible that ĺde wasn’t the only one in Madame Suliman’s machinations that was affected by an amnesia charm? He was surprised at himself for not considering it.

At the threshold of earth and water, ĺde turned. Her face was damp with tears. “What good will it do?” she shrugged. Her voice was pitying. “You don’t remember. You don’t remember that it was you who wore the seven-league boots. It was you who caught me, at Madame Suliman’s behest. It was you who trapped me in that palace, under her. You’ve done all this,” she raised her hands helplessly. 

The Captain stopped short. Howl couldn’t see his expression, but could imagine very well what he was feeling. He only hoped that the Captain could think of some kind of response that would satisfy the star, create some resolution in the same way they’d done before, with the eastern visage.

“Has it all been so very terrible?” Howl nearly missed the Captain’s question, it was said so low. 

ĺde did not answer, but did let him walk toward her. Her fists clenched at her sides. When he was close to her, it was her turn to stumble back a couple of steps - what seemed like reluctantly. Still the Captain walked forward. He held out his hands placatingly. She shook her head to herself, as though not wanting to give in to some thought or urge. She retreated until her back was in the water, coursing over her crown and shoulders and puddling in the dust. Finally the Captain was directly in front of her, practically eclipsing her from Howl’s view; he placed his hands on her shoulders and ĺde’s hands flew up as though to push them away, but she did not. For what felt like an eternity neither of them moved nor spoke.

Abruptly, as with the eastern visage, ĺde froze and soon after dissipated into billions of glittering droplets of water. They sank into the wall of wellwater and spread throughout, floating there like distant stars in the inky murk. 

Tristan turned to Howl with a single golden waterlily cupped in his large hand, his face pained. “Let’s go.”


	8. Fallen Stars

**Chapter 8: Fallen Stars**

 

Howl had taken the lily to keep it with the book. Tristan sat with his back to a plum tree, curled and hunched among its knobbly roots. A storm was brewing overhead, casting a premature night. The brief respite he’d felt from the curse was fading and the effects were coming back stronger than before - the dehydration was causing him pain. Worse than the pain to his body, however, was the ache he felt in his chest following what this ĺde had so despairingly revealed.

“You need to drink,” said Sophie, holding out a full wellbucket and dripping ladle.

Tristan couldn’t stand the sight of it. “No thank you,” he whispered and turned his face away. What was the point in drinking, anyhow? What good would it do? It wasn’t like he deserved it anyway.

There was a pause in which only the rumble of the thunder and the breeze through the orchard’s branches could be heard.

Howl came to stand with them, his boots making little sound over the grass that ĺde’s magic had sprouted around the well. Behind him, the enchanted water was slowly spiraling back into the pond where it belonged. “Your body can’t keep going much longer,” said Howl. “I’d estimate you have one more day and that’s including that we have to rest you tonight.”

Tristan balled a fist and slammed it on his thigh, “I know that! Don’t you think I know that?” he burst. He calmed, his hand rose to press a withering palm against his papery face to hide it. 

After a moment’s hesitation, Howl continued, quietly, “You may not make it much farther - to the other two visages. But we have two tokens. We can revive half of her at least and she must have forgiven you at the end, there. Isn’t this enough?”

Tristan could barely think straight. While Howl’s words lined up with his initial estimates from the early hours of this morning, considering the encounters with the two visages it was tempting to tell Howl ‘yes’. If he said yes, perhaps the curse on him could be lifted more quickly. If he said yes, he could endeavor to make ĺde’s happy visage indeed happy; he could even endeavor to right the largest of wrongs with her despondent visage. 

But were any of those even possible? They had no concrete proof that ĺde could lift his curse, for one, but moreover…

_ How can I make her happy if I’m the one who caused her so much pain? I’m hardly the person for the job, _ he thought. 

“How about we get home, first,” Sophie suggested to break the awkward silence. “We can decide from there.”

 

* * *

 

Another potion at least helped Tristan eat, though he didn’t manage much of the soup. Luckily much of the attention was off him courtesy of Howl’s old apprentice, Markl, who’d lingered after his duties of watching Morgan. He, Howl and Sophie were chatting amicably back and forth, recalling old adventures, leaving Tristan to his thoughts.

Tristan picked himself up from the dining table and excused himself, taking off his military jacket - it didn’t fit well anymore due to his frame having shrunk. He slumped in one of the armchairs in front of Calcifer’s fire. His hand automatically reached into his pocket and pulled out ĺde’s stone; her two tokens - unwilting waterlily and his father’s favorite book - were innocently sitting beside him in the second armchair. The conversation behind him faded into a dull murmur.

He struggled, as he had throughout the carriage ride, with what ĺde had told him - the memory he had supposedly forgotten. He had no reason to doubt her. Madame Suliman could easily have afflicted others, such as him, as well as ĺde. If her hold on her position and her power was so vital and precarious, from a tactical standpoint it would have been necessary. However, Tristan wasn’t sure how complicit he had been in capturing the star that became the demon that became ĺde - if what he had been told was true. Would he ever remember the full details? More importantly, if he was truly the worst of men, would he ever be able to forgive himself?

Tristan rubbed his thumb over the wet, cold stone; threads of the lock of her hair caught on his ragged cuticles.

_ “No matter how far you chase me, Captain, I cannot forgive you,”  _ she’d said. She’d nearly killed him by drowning.  And yet…

And yet, if she’d wanted to finish the job, wanted to push him away, she could have - she was a powerful witch still, at the end of the day - but she didn’t. As she’d stood there holding on to him he’d seen the anguish in her face change to helpless resignation with nary a word, and then she’d disappeared. As he’d managed before to change some inner thought process with the eastern visage, so too had it seemed that he’d done the same with this one - that she’d forgiven him, despite her words.

_ Was it really me who caught her? How? I thought only wizards and witches could do that by themselves and that even then, it was rare. Mortals aren’t supposed to be able to do such a thing on their own. _ Tristan remembered his father’s fate, but -  _ Why can’t I remember what happened? _

“Don’t beat yourself up too much about it,” said Calcifer, startling him. “At the end of the day you’re human - a mortal. You’re fallible and you’re allowed to make mistakes, or have the wool pulled over your eyes. It’s not like you owe either of the Sulimans anything - no one could blame you for cutting ties now.”

Tristan gave a sardonic huff of laughter. “What? To redeem myself from my involvement?”

“Bit late for that?”

“More than that,” Tristan shook his head. “And it’s not self-preservation either,” he admitted quietly. “I have to keep going - for her. For what little we have. For what little she’s been able to give me. It’s the honorable thing to do. I’m a soldier, after all.”

“Those don’t sound like the words of just a soldier,” said Calcifer. 

Tristan didn’t answer, and looked away.

 

* * *

 

_ Tristan woke in his berth underneath the Pendragons’ stairs. Or at least, he thought he did - the only clue he had that this was only a dream was that in the deep umber glow of the low fire, ĺde sat in the armchair closest to him - where her two tokens had been, which now sat at her feet like offerings to a nearly-forgotten deity. Her liquid-gold hair was brought over one shoulder, her arms folded over an ivory silk robe, and her feet were bare - all as if she’d been woken long ago and was holding insomnia’s vigil ever since. She was watching him with a soft smile and, on seeing that he was awake, rose, and stepped over the book and the lily to wander to him. The undulating firelight made the fern pattern embroidered on her robe come alive as though stirred by a breeze stronger than her movements. _

_ ĺde sat down on the bed beside him. The closeness, and particularly the familiarity of that closeness, was startling - nearly to the point of making him uncomfortable. They’d never been this familiar with one another in the waking world. Though her posture suggested the professional distance he was accustomed to - as if she was merely visiting him when he was sick - everything else spoke of intimate friends, or more. _

_ “Why don’t you tell me about your father, your mother?” she whispered. Her hand felt so real as it stroked his cheek - a cheek no longer rough like tree bark - and the movement trod that line between friendship and something closer. _

_ He never would have told her when they were both awake. But he told her now. _

_ “I was born to Marcel and Grace De Leon - my father abandoned his father’s line of work as a baker in favor of moving to the country and farming, and his pioneering stubbornness somehow managed to inspire my mother to follow him and marry him. She died of a snake bite when I was seven - so simple a thing, really. So simple I don’t think my father could accept it. He devoted the rest of his life to trying to find a way to bring her back, and our relationship deteriorated as a result - he even sent me to live with my grandfather in the city; I’d come back every summer surrounding my birthday to visit and it was miserable. We barely talked - I was more like a hired hand - and it’s obvious to me now that he never moved on from losing my mother: all her things remained exactly where she’d left them, like the house was a shrine to her. _

_ “The summer I turned fifteen my father had a starfall shower over our rapeseed fields - something he’d apparently been waiting on for some time. I don’t know what charlatan enabled his belief or facilitated him, but he was able to harness a few at once, somehow. Not to any great extent, mind you, and only for a short period of time - just long enough to talk to them, try to bargain with them to bring my mother back. I couldn’t tell you what it was that ultimately killed him - the labor of holding on to more than one star at once, or a trickery of the stars themselves - but when he did not wake me in the morning I went out and found patterns of circles cut into our fields, and my father dead at the center of them.” _

_ He looked up from the blanket covering him. ĺde was staring at him thoughtfully, but as usual - and thankfully so - without pity. He would have broken under her pity. _

_ “You enlisted in the military then, didn’t you?” she said. “You devoted your life to your career as a soldier.” _

_ Tristan nodded. He had indeed devoted his life to it. Somehow, he’d felt he had nothing else - needed nothing else - and in feeling so, it had become true. He had done everything morally acceptable, sacrificed whatever he could, for the sake of honor and service. To think that he would have become embroiled in a scheme to empower the Royal Sorceress - to whichever end - pointed to some hitherto unacknowledged act of desperation. Why would he, Tristan, an upstanding example of loyalty and justice, be involved in anything remotely contrary to that? What had he wanted, he who prided himself on not wanting anything? _

_ ĺde took his hands in her lap. She stared out at the room that wasn’t either of theirs, and they stayed in silence that way for who knew how long. Her thumb ran across his knuckles, over, over. And then she asked, “You were angry at my kind, weren’t you? Do you remember?” _

_ “I don’t remember,” he said. He did not want to even  _ recall  _ feeling anger at her, even if it had been true then. The room began to darken, as if the fire was going out, and the room began to creak and groan.  _

_ “Do you remember?” _

_ “No, ĺde.” _

_ “Do you remember?” _

_ “No.” _

_ “Do you remember?” _

_ It came as a flash, first, and a burst of cold steam that disturbed linens, hair, light objects. Flashes again through windows into the pitch-black room. He smelled a hundred extinguished matches. Between them Tristan could see himself stumbling in the thunderstorm-slick cave in the mountains, could see the cave’s walls shine like obsidian in the light cast by the star he’d chased inside. He could see Madame Suliman waiting outside it, while the rest of the starfall continued overhead through the lightning and the great lashings of rain. He could see himself cornering the star, feel the heaviness of the special boots on his feet and the ache of the anger and vengefulness contorting his face. The star had been blinding. He’d thrown a special net he had been given and it had glowed as though made of strung emeralds - a single strand of the net led back to a belt around his waist, and in turn led back to the lax end of its coil in Madame Suliman’s hand. The star had screamed as it fell, and he had laughed. _

_ Slowly, the flashing stopped and the room returned to the dim, comforting firelight. ĺde was still beside him, looking down at him sympathetically. Tristan first realized his grip on her cold hands was too hard, and released them, and then realized that there were tears on his face. The ache in his chest had intensified and his head was hurting. _

_ “I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “ĺde I’m so sorry.” One hand rose to cover his face. “I remember,” he whispered. “I  _ was _ angry. It was me. It was me.” _

_ If he was sorry, he wondered why he couldn’t touch her. What good could mere words do for a being such as her, as altered forever as her? _

_ “It was also her,” she said softly. “And - you are not remembering everything.” _

_ He didn’t immediately believe her first clause - Tristan let out a louder pained groan, his head falling back on the pillows - but eventually, he forced himself to acknowledge it. He calmed, and recalled her second clause. “I’m not remembering everything? Of course not. Why would I want to remember the exact details of how I caused you pain?” _

_ ĺde resettled and looked down at her hands, discomfited in the same way she’d been back when he’d asked her - rather sneeringly, in retrospect - if not feeling the cold was a witch’s talent. “I mean that you don’t remember how we met,” she clarified, and the sadness in her tone showed him that she knew it to be true. _

_ Tristan felt something twist in his gut - not just because of the shock that indeed he could not remember, but because ĺde was so generous for not thinking of him capturing her as their first meeting.  _

_ She smiled at him, though. “You will.” _


	9. The Southern Visage

**Chapter 9: The Southern Visage**

 

Tristan woke the next morning when he was shaken, and the piercing headache came on its heels along with the remembered pain of his dream. He was alarmed to find that he felt short of breath, and that his eyelids had difficulty opening. Howl and Sophie stood above him with concerned expressions. Daylight was blazing through the curtains.

“Stay still,” said Sophie. 

He wondered, then, why they had woken him, but had no voice with which to object or strength to move anyhow.

As Sophie rushed away, Howl stepped forward. “We’ll need to think of something stronger than the potions I’ve been giving you,” he said. “For some reason you seem to have degenerated quicker overnight - if I didn’t know any better I’d say something exasperated the spell.”

Tristan barely heard him through the ache in his head and heart. He felt ashamed to even remember the dream in which he’d learned the truth of what happened, remembered what had transpired only yesterday. 

“If you’re thinking ‘what good will it do?’, don’t.”

Tristan’s eyes slid to look at Howl. 

Howl’s brow furrowed. “Did you dream last night, by chance?”

Tristan managed to nod. His gaze slid away.

“Of ĺde?” 

Again Tristan nodded, and squeezed his burning eyes shut for a moment to push back the memory of his laughter at her expense. 

Sophie returned with a jar of cold lotion and bandages, and hovered beside him as if she didn’t know where to start. She then shook her head and began gently embalming his arms one at a time - as she lifted them, Tristan saw with alarm that more than just a thin layer of his skin was peeling - rather, pieces of it were slipping along parched muscle like dried fruit rind. Tristan felt too detached from it - too rooted in the dream-world still - to feel nauseated.

“Why don’t you make yourself useful, dearest, and get his legs,” Sophie said, kindly but sternly. “Apologies, Captain. But we can’t have you falling to bits.”

 

* * *

 

They worked on him for the next half an hour, carefully covering his torn skin with a layer of lotion before bandaging his limbs, torso, and neck. It did not have to be said - Tristan understood that at this point, the bandages would be binding his skin to his body. 

Howl gave him another potion to tide him over while he thought of something else, but he still could not rise from the bed. It did restore a croak of his voice to him, and when they retreated from him he said, “I can’t do this.”

Husband and wife stopped and turned to him.

“I can’t.” He’d never openly admitted such a thing to anyone, ever. It was shameful. 

“Just last night you said you had to keep going,” said Calcifer, and Tristan heard him dragging a log off the hearth. 

“Because of your body?” Sophie suggested. “We’re working on that.”

Tristan breathed deep. “What’s happening to me is deserved. You did not see what I saw in my dreams last night.” 

There was a long pause that Tristan told himself meant he was right. Then, Sophie said, “Dreams are just that, Captain -- dreams.”

“I laughed when I caught her. I wore the boots. I cast the net. It was a memory -- not a dream.”

Again, another long pause. Tristan closed his eyes, wished he’d never have to open them again.

“Howl,” Calcifer said. “Give him that stone he found. Captain -- swallow it.”

“What good will that do?” Sophie queried.

“It’s small enough now -- and we’ve seen how being close to her magic helps him. It’s worth a try.”

Tristan felt the wet, icy surface of the ingot against his lips and the lock of hair frozen inside it tickling his chin. He heard Sophie hiss at Howl and, a moment later, the  _ schnip _ of scissors -- the hair was trimmed down. They helped him sit up.

“Here,” Sophie said, and he felt her press the hair into his palm; she helped him close his fingers around it. The fact that he couldn’t feel the hair itself because of the bandages broke him further. 

He opened his mouth and accepted the blackberry-sized ingot’s sacrament onto his tongue and, with great difficulty, swallowed it. The shorn ends of the hair scratched his throat on the way down but the coolness of the ingot coated it. He felt it descend through his oesophagus and finally come to rest in his stomach; moments later, the coolness spread through his muscles and some of the aching dissipated. He could breathe more easily.

“How do you feel?” Howl asked.

Tristan forced himself to open his eyes as they laid him back down. He struggled to lift his hand to look at the hair that had been placed there -- barely the length of a finger. 

_ “You will,” _ he remembered ĺde saying in the dream. He had yet to remember how they’d met.

_ If so, that means I will not die today,  _ he realized.

 

* * *

 

The carriage ride out of the city showed Tristan that the palace guard were expanding their search for Prince Edward and himself and ĺde. Hastily-drawn flyers were being posted on every streetcorner and soldiers were everywhere. He was somewhat grateful that his appearance was less recognizable to the layperson at least, but relied solely on Howl’s charms on the carriage to keep him out of the scrutiny of the suited and masked, oil-like creatures that were no doubt Madame Suliman’s lackeys. Howl had, this time, insisted that Sophie stay behind with their son, and Tristan too could feel the rising danger of their situation and the diminishing time.

They followed the river south -- maybe an hour out of the city -- and through the window Tristan eyed the road that would have taken them to his father’s abandoned watermill, situated on an offshoot of this very river. Then the road curved, and it was out of sight behind a hedge.

Although the bandages remained all over his body, the ingot’s coolness had spread throughout his body and done well to relieve much of the atrophy in his muscles. It had been replaced with a pins-and-needles sensation at his joints that made him want to move as much as possible. Not such a far-flung thought, now that he was able to breathe more easily and his strength seemed buoyed-up by strings that pulled him in different directions -- one, back to the Pendragon household where the book and the waterlily lay safe; another, to the southern visage somewhere along this river; and yet one more to the north and the Iron Valley glacier. It was strange to be able to feel the pieces of ĺde in this way and yet, it also felt comfortable. He wondered darkly if he had felt this way when he’d snared her in the emerald net in the cave.

“Another league or so ahead and there’s a waterfall,” said Howl in the seat across from him. He looked at Tristan expectantly.

“What?”

“Well, you’ve effectively become our compass, having swallowed the ingot,” Howl explained. He gesticulated vaguely, “Does the southern visage...feel close?”

Tristan tried not to scoff. He did not fully feel human under this scrutiny but, he supposed, the ingot was helping him hold on to life. He gave the question as much genuine thought as he could. “I think -- I hope -- she’s at the waterfall. It feels that way. I can’t explain --”

“You don’t need to. Magic has its own laws that are unseen to mortals. If you were a wizard you would be able to explain -- but you, Captain, are caught in the middle. A vessel, if you will. You can sense it and you’re tied into it, but for the most part it remains indecipherable to you,” Howl said.

“Through ĺde,” Tristan clarified. He cleared his throat and it no longer hurt. “Because I’m the one who caught her, just as Calcifer is tied to you because you caught him.”

Howl dipped his head in a nod. “Though you share ownership with Madame Suliman.”

Tristan resettled in his seat. “She isn’t owned by either of us.”

It took them another half an hour to reach the Nightingale Falls, which were a popular picnic spot for the locals in the summer and consisted of three main ribbons of the river -- one that hurled itself over a precipice into a twenty-foot drop, and two either side of it, far gentler, that tumbled over and through moss-covered boulders. They plunged into a deep pool that never froze over, and the entire area was secluded by screens of willows and poplars that, when they had leafed-out, hid the nests of the eponymous nightingales that usually frequented the area. Tristan felt the balm of happier childhood memories for a change -- coming here with his grandfather as a treat to go swimming and diving. 

The carriage stopped at the top of the falls; a grass and bare earth knoll on the western side of the river where so many carriages and pedestrians had stopped before. The river had been broken into its three channels by strips of charcoal-colored bedrock that were glossy with the constant splashing, and at their arrival a small herd of mountain goats bounded away over the thin islands. Tristan pulled himself out of the carriage and the mist from the falls was cool on his face, while the strings -- now stronger, more like rope -- in his body began to burn and the tingling sensation intensified. He wasn’t sure whether they were giving him renewed strength or whether he was simply attached to them and they were moving, but he felt himself be pulled toward the winding, rocky path that would lead down to the pool. He did not turn to see if Howl followed.

The path was a sandy crevice through the rocks between the middle fall and its more playful triplet; the passage of many hands and feet over the years had worn the stone smooth. Tristan descended into the cold with the burning sensation in his stomach and heart to keep him warm. His ears were ringing.

_ What will this visage be like? She must be here, surely? I can feel her near, _ he thought.

The path continued at the bottom of the falls, running along the pool in the form of slabs of granite. The pool itself was several meters across, almost perfectly round, and its dark emerald surface churned with the energy of the falls. The skeletons of the trees and the rockfaces rose up around him in a sheet of grays like a bowl. The current was strong today and, reminding himself of his experience with the well just yesterday, Tristan stayed a safe distance from the edge. He looked around the chalice-like glade, but could see no sign of ĺde. He hoped she wasn’t in the pool -- it’d been a long time since he’d swam and despite his renewed energy he wasn’t confident that he had enough to fight a river’s current, particularly if this ĺde put up resistance. 

_ Come on, you can sense her. You’re tied to her. Try harder, _ he told himself, and meandered along the lip of the pool. He saw a flash of Howl’s harlequin coat among the rocks, telling him that he too was coming down. Tristan concentrated, turning on his heel. After a moment he remembered there was a cave behind the waterfall and decided to head for it. 

The rocks were slippery and lichen-covered the farther away they were from the water. He found the ledge that would lead him to the cave and climbed onto it, making his way carefully toward the veil of the waterfall. The mist became spray became splashes, soaking his clothes and the bandages underneath them. By the time he’d reached the waterfall his hair was already dripping. The entrance to the cave was small, and he had to climb over another rock to get behind the waterfall -- the better entrance was on the other side, he remembered. 

The low-ceilinged cave was not incredibly deep, and what little light made it around or through the falls cast everything in a deep blue shade that amplified the cold. But the burning sensation in Tristan’s body was stronger than ever and made him want to remove his jacket. He froze on the spot.

At the back of the cave on a ledge, emitting soft light, ĺde was lying on her side with her head propped in one hand, eyes already on him. Wide silver cuffs around her wrists glinted in the light. Tristan, however, was more focused on the ten lions covering the uneven floor at her feet. The two males, eight females laid or sat, their eyes already on him too. Reminded of  _ A Summer of Lions _ , he wondered if the lions were holding her prisoner or whether they were here to hold him prisoner. Either way, he was not equipped to fend them off.

ĺde sat up, then stood. She took a few barefooted paces into the pride of lions, the long hem of her white dress trailing through paws and stone like retreating surf. She did not look pleased to see him. Her chin was raised, her eyes narrowed. The misty breeze from the waterfall to their right disturbed strands of her coiled-up hair. 

“Come to find another one of us, oh brave Captain, oh noble starcatcher?” she sneered. Her voice echoed around in the cave, which wouldn’t have been terrible if it didn’t sound like several voices speaking slightly out of time. It sounded as though it was coming to him through water. “Does this bring back memories?”

He wasn’t sure how to respond to her goad. ĺde stood in the middle of the lions, some of which had raised their heads curiously or had stood too. He noticed then that nestled in the folds of her hair was a familiar comb made of tortoiseshell and abalone -- it had belonged to his mother. 

“Not going to speak to me, my wounded warrior, my gilded captor?”

He forced himself to. “You’re not the only one who was a victim that day --”

“You have no idea.” She had not shouted, but her firm voice was loud enough in his head to make him squint. The ringing in his ears intensified. The lions grew agitated -- they were all standing now and many were beginning to prowl around him, their heads low. “What did you imagine would happen? Did you think I would be Madame Suliman’s ‘daughter’ forever? Did you think we would continue our little charade for years until you became an incontinent old man? Did you think I would be contained? Did you think I would love you?” 

“I did not know what I thought,” Tristan said. The ache in him was back, but not for the waning of the ingot’s spell. 

ĺde’s eyes seemed to brighten; she frowned and stepped closer to him -- close enough to place a hand flat on his chest. Her head tilted and she sneered into his face, “She’s in here, is she?” 

The burning sensation intensified and Tristan’s body felt rigid from pins and needles; he wanted to recoil from her but was unable, as though the magic that had been separated from ĺde was seeking to return to her through his ribcage. More worrying to him was the way ĺde’s face had contorted into an accusatory, ugly-looking grimace. He could feel the coolness of the ingot move inside him, trying to find its way back up his oesophagus to her palm. 

Tristan grabbed hold of the gauntlet-like cuff around her wrist. “You,” he spluttered, “you’re in here. A piece of you.”

There was a moment’s pause, and then ĺde said, “Unfortunately for you.” Her hand moved.

Tristan felt a sudden stabbing sensation in his chest and looked down to see that somehow, her hand was up to her knuckles in his flesh and blood was already beginning to spill. Everything was cold -- the blood, her hand, his body. As though it were a second heart he could feel her fingers around the ingot, seizing it, making the second lifeforce it gave him ebb. He gasped and attempted to remove her hand. 

Then, the ingot seemed to fight back. Blood crystallized into jagged violet-red petals, and the magic shot up the southern visage’s bare arm and as it went, those petals erupted along the paths of her veins until it terminated in a crescent shape on the side of her face. She recoiled from it like a physical blow, and jerked her hand out of him. Lions roared at him and the sound was deafening in the close quarters of the cave.

The next moment Tristan felt himself flung through the waterfall. For a moment the pummeling of the water was incredibly painful -- but what was worse was when he was falling through nothing but air on the other side. Then, too soon, was the cold plunge of the pool and the currents toiling within it. He used what strength he had to kick and grab for the surface and at length, miraculously, was able to. When he rapidly blinked his eyes and looked around, he saw the waterfalls freezing over and the ice rushing toward him over the pool’s surface.

_ “Ever had frostbite?” _ he remembered Howl asking jokingly. Tristan made a poor attempt to swim for shore.

His body was plucked from the water a few meters into the air, and as he began to fall Tristan saw both the pool locking-over with ice and a bone-chilling  _ ker-lunk _ , and Howl on the shore. “Sorry!” Howl shouted to him.

Tristan landed with a thud on the solid ice. Blood smeared over it and red crystal petals crumbled from his chest wound as he struggled to right himself. His breath fogged in front of him. With difficulty, he stood, but he was not aching as much as he thought he would be and he knew he had the ingot to thank for it -- he wondered how long it would last. A glance down showed him that a cluster of deep red-violet crystal waterlillies were blooming out of the wound, sealing it.

The lions were coming out from behind the falls and making their way down the rocks. He could hear the grumbling in their throats as if they were already right in front of him and he wished he’d brought his sword. The frozen cascade of the central waterfall rippled a little and ĺde leaned out from its center; her chest cavity was contorted like that of a gargoyle and he was a little disturbed to see her climb out of the ice and down the cascade. Her fingers plunged into its surface like ice picks and left behind smears of red.

When she and the pride of lions were on the pool’s surface and sauntering toward him, Tristan looked at Howl on the shore. “What do I do?” he asked. Why wasn’t the wizard helping him? He glanced again at ĺde -- the way her wet white dress clung to her made her appear like a skeleton wrapped in bandages. 

“She seems to want that piece of her back,” Howl said.

“Yes I’ve found that out already, thank you!” Tristan shouted and parted his jacket to show him the bouquet of red on his chest. “Can’t you do something?”

Howl held up his hands, “Let’s consider --”

ĺde lashed out a hand -- the lions roared and leapt for Tristan in unison. Howl too swept up a hand and a wave of green light scored the ice, becoming a solid plane on which the lions crashed and scrabbled. ĺde came to stand on the other side, her eyes set on Tristan. As she had done with his chest, she laid a palm on the shimmering green plane. Silvery-blue lines seeped out from under her fingers and the plane began to crack. Meanwhile the lions were attempting to go around and Howl had to use his other hand to construct extensions to the barrier.

“The lions are her magic,” he shouted to Tristan, “which means the part of you that is tied to her magic is also tied to them. You need to see if you can control them, and fight her back.”

“I will not harm her!” Tristan replied.

“How else do you propose to get through to her?”

Tristan tried to rapidly assess this new ‘opponent’ that wasn’t quite an opponent. This was different from commanding a battalion or meeting a single weapon-wielding enemy head-on. In front of him were lions and a quartered persona of a sorceress; he was unarmed and even his body was unfamiliar to him. He was on a frozen plunge-pool, for all that was good!

_ Think. You have to deal with the lions. They’re clearly drawn from the book -- maybe there’s a clue there. _

He remembered that the lions were lessons that the son had to learn before he was released from their prison; the same lions he had caught for his father for the glory of his palace. He knew each of the lions had represented a lesson, but one glance at their pale bellies and bared teeth and huge paws and he couldn’t think of them as anything but flesh and pelt. And ĺde was slowly covering the shield in cracks; Howl was struggling to hold them back.

_ Why was it Father’s favorite? He’s probably laughing at me now because I can’t remember -- because I disappointed -- _

The shield broke; lions smashed forward and ĺde’s laughter was louder than all of them. Tristan was tackled by one and he crashed onto his back under its weight, threw his arms up over his face to shield it from the steaming maw. He felt the wound in his chest erupt. He was expecting teeth to sink into him, and yet --

Tristan glanced through his arms. The male lion that had pounced on him had been snared by crystaline red vines that glowed, and as other lions tried to do the same more of these vines lashed out at them and wrapped around their necks and legs. As they struggled Tristan felt the pull in his chest and he pressed his hands into the flowers there; even as his touch crushed them they regrew. The petaled vines, however, did not break when he pulled on them. 

The lions howled and a red sheen flew over their tawny fur. Tristan had seen fear in men and he saw it now in those amber eyes. Suddenly they began to crowd around him, stand over him, and roar at the approaching ĺde. She seemed haughtily amused by the tipping of the scale, and warded off Howl’s renewed attempts to create a barrier with explosions of pale coral-like structures from the pool’s surface. She was only a few feet away.

Tristan again managed to stand. The vines that had sprung from his chest pulsed with light and he could feel his heart beating in time with it -- he wasn’t so sure that he was the one in control of the beating. He could feel the lions somehow, and his own mind felt more bestial in response. He could hear their hearts in his ears, feel the pressure on his palms as they shifted from paw to paw. He eyed ĺde’s delicate white throat, wanted to rip it out.

“I will not harm you, ĺde,” he said as much for himself as for her.

Silvery light sped over the ice. One by one the lions clashed with the silvery magic, which became ghostly lions themselves. The lions fought for him and Tristan could feel it in his chest; those that had seemed so real a moment ago were becoming drafts of themselves drawn in red and amber magic, the details of their fur and muscles blurring like a watercolor. In contrast, in front of him ĺde was very real and very close -- two more steps and she could touch him. Lions warred around them.

“You already did,” she said.

“What do you want from me, ĺde?” Tristan asked. The ache was back; the vines from his second heart were thinning and dimming but still pulling on him. 

ĺde only smiled a cruel smile that hollowed-out her already gaunt face.

Tristan thought rapidly. Through the lion yowls and claws on ice, he said, “Do you want to be free from your captor? You are locking your own cage as we speak. The only way you’ll be free is to let me help you -- let me right my wrong. Only then can we stop Madame Suliman, and you can seek whatever power or happiness you wish.” He swallowed. “You could even go back to the sky.”

The cruelty in her face abated somewhat, but her tone was cold as she said, “If I did that, you would die.”

He did not blink. “I know.”

ĺde closed the difference between them; her body severed all of the vines with merely a touch. Robbed of power, with a final howl the lions disappeared. Into the sudden silence ĺde said, “You must not remember how we met the second time. Otherwise you’d know how impossible it is for my better half to go back from whence we came.” Eyes narrowed, she held her palm up between them, “Give her back to me.”

But Tristan heard the loudest whisper in his skull, _ “Embrace me.” _

Tristan wrapped his arms around the silk-draped skeletal woman in front of him, and held hard. He felt the wound in his chest implode again, and squeezed his eyes shut at the pain of it. ĺde struggled and seethed; he could feel the ingot’s magic burning brightly and wrapping around them both, suffocating her own. He felt the ice beneath their feet crack apart, but even as they fell into the impossibly, burningly cold water he held onto her until all he could hear and feel was a roaring in his body. He did all he could -- hold on, hold his breath.

  
  



	10. The Northern Visage

**Chapter 10: The Northern Visage**

 

When Tristan awoke it was on the side of the Nightingale Falls, which were flowing gently, soothingly, again. There was no ice anywhere, only the bare canvas of not-quite-spring. Movement in his periphery caught his eye -- Howl was turning over his cape to continue drying on the granite in the late afternoon sunshine. 

“Thank you,” Tristan said as he sat up.

“For what?” Howl said, stepping over to him. “I’d like to take the credit for getting you out of there, but it wasn’t me.”

Tristan propped his arms on his upraised knees, hung his head for a moment to try to quiet the ringing in his head. Only a small trace of the crystallized magic could be seen around his wound, and the blood on his shirt and bandages had been washed out to a pale pink. “ĺde, then?”

“Part of her,” Howl acknowledged. “Though at a distance it looked like your own doing. One assumes ĺde wants to save herself and you are the means by which she’ll do it.” Tristan glanced up at Howl, who nodded once and gestured with his eyes at something in the opposite direction. Tristan looked.

At first he confused ĺde for a veil floating in the wind. She was standing on a rock a small distance away like a shred of mist keeping watch over the water, the entirety of her pale and partially translucent, shimmering with blue, green and gold when she glided toward him, knelt beside him. Her face, too, seemed veiled -- it was hard for him to make out any detail or expression, though he could see that her mouth moved when she spoke.

“We haven’t much time,” she said. Her voice was a whisper.

“Are you all right?” he asked instead because to contemplate anything else was a strain. He got onto his knees and felt his muscles ache in the process. “How are you here?”

She placed a hand light as gossamer on his knee and looked him in the eye -- her own pupil-less ones faintly glowed. “We haven’t much time,” she repeated gently. “I am projecting myself from within you for the time being, so I can be clearer.”

He wanted to touch her, but when he reached for her shoulder his hand passed straight through and there was a coldness that lingered on his skin when he withdrew. He supposed she was right. She was as without substance as he was without strength. “What do we do?” he whispered back, then cleared his throat and cursed his weakness, rephrasing, “What do you need me to do?”

ĺde nodded once, “We. We go to the northern visage. The strongest. There isn’t much time -- we must take advantage of what strength remains in you, because without you I cannot be whole again. Likewise, if you run out of strength...her words will be true, and you will turn to dust. We must be done before nightfall.”

He nodded back at her.

“We go north, and there, I will remove your spirit from your body so that I may occupy it -- in this way you can travel undetected and uninhibited, and reach the last of me,” she said. 

It didn’t quite make sense to Tristan, but they were desperate at this point. He looked down as she pressed his mother’s comb into his hands, folded his fingers over it. 

“A carriage is too slow to get us to the Iron Glacier in good time, Daughter Suliman,” Howl warned. “It’s midafternoon.”

But ĺde was leaning in close, and still speaking to Tristan as if she hadn’t heard the other wizard, “Do you remember how we met?” her voice echoed and rose and became all-consuming in a melodic rush --

The world around him shut itself into darkness, as though a door had been slammed. A second later Tristan found himself submerged in magic rushing around him like a blue and green river, pulling him in a direction he couldn’t specify. All signs of the physical world seemed gone, but he felt ĺde’s hand in his pulling him too. His other hand held tightly to his mother’s comb. The rapid streaks and ribbons of light coursed through him -- his flesh had been replaced by a multitude of red and gold lines as if some other mighty hand were sketching him, and ahead of him ĺde was the same veiled silver ghost, an invisible wind tossing her hair and her skirts. He glanced behind him and saw a vaguely-human-shaped blotch of green magic which he presumed to be Howl. He could barely hear himself think. It felt like they were walking but when he squinted, he thought he could see shadows on top of shadows that might have been the countryside and the town.

As he watched these shadows and lights merged with one another, bleeding like watercolor infused with a glow, and simultaneously he felt a tug on his head, his eyes, his heart and the ingot -- no, his mind? Because he recognized what he saw, though it could no longer be real: horses, drawn in violet. So many horses and he was running with them like he was running with mere reflections and shadows through a forest. Gradually the many horses coalesced into one, beneath him, but between the stark lines of the black trees he saw the ghosts of a pride of lions.

_ “Do you remember how we met?” _ he heard ĺde ask again.

_ That was the night I rode chasing my father’s ghost. That was the night I rode without stopping until my horse collapsed. _

The scene around him changed; Tristan rode out of the forest into a dark meadow with Ingary ahead of him, the castle looming larger than life. He felt -- no, remembered? --  _ the way the horse suddenly fell, pitching him over its head into the tall grass. _ Unlike the memory this time he was up in an instant and running but somehow, at the same time his limbs were as heavy as they had been when he was trudging forward, exhausted and grieving. The magic was an icy-blue wind around him with sparks of gold fire, and like ĺde’s hand pulled him now that wind pulled him to the most finite point --  _ ĺde wandering the meadow, stopping on the crest of the hill to admire a starless sky -- bright and soothing. Only then had he collapsed, gasping, at her feet without knowing who she was. She had knelt and cradled his head in her lap and bade him drink from her hand, from which cool water eternally sprung. But more soothing still was the way, somehow, that in her eyes he had found the understanding he sought. She had said, “I was sent to find you.” _

_ “Do you remember?” _

_ How could I have forgotten? How? _

They fled from the memory, leaving their outlines in light behind. In the shadows Tristan could see the buildings of Ingary and between them, those of the lions running with them; he could also see dim flames of sickly yellow here and there, tackled one by one by the lions and blazing bright as they did so. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he understood them to be Madame Suliman’s lackeys and he recoiled whenever a ghostly hand reached too close, became too solid. At length the city shredded away behind them as long lines and gaps in Tristan’s vision -- the lions were dealing with the lackeys and the green blaze that he assumed was Howl leaping through them, but slowing. 

ĺde pulled him into the maw of the Iron Valley and onto the tongue of the glacier. Something in the magic stopped and when it did, Tristan felt slammed into a wall. For a brief moment he was back in the physical world: the evening sun was setting over Ingary and his strength was waning; snow was being dusted off the black peaks of the Iron Valley into the deep shadows; Howl was in the scree-covered land in front of the glacier, his hands coated in green magic while he paced behind a line of lions fighting with the lackeys sent from Madame Suliman.

Howl turned to him, “Behind you! Go! I’ll hold them here!”

Tristan did not have time to look behind him. He felt something impact against his back and the physical world vanished into the void once more. He felt a hand trail from one shoulder to the other across the back of his neck and the ghostly ĺde rounded him, her free hand raising a finger to his lips. 

_ “Now. It’s time,”  _ she said. 

Tristan felt like his skin was being ripped from him, and his vision danced as though he no longer had control over his eyes. As soon as it had begun it was over -- the physical world was back, but he was looking at his body -- still standing, still moving. He raised what he thought was his hand but couldn’t see anything. He took a second to concentrate and realized he could feel ĺde in front of him, occupying his body like she’d promised. 

“I am here for you!” his body shouted in his own voice. 

Tristan turned to see what ‘he’ was shouting at. As in his dream, the final visage was waiting for them, but it did not look anything like the woman he knew. She was faceless; her skin was a dull gold covered in intricate gilt and her hair was gone -- instead she was crowned with a wreath of golden thorns. Haloes of orange light surrounded her. The red gossamer she wore was distinctly the color of blood and seemed to blend into her skin, leaving most of her upper half bare while the skirt that began at her abdomen fell into swathes over the ice. She was floating rather than standing, from what he could tell, taller than he knew her to be and had two additional pairs of arms poised with palms upraised, but empty. She was gleaming and Tristan understood that he was no longer looking at ĺde, but at the part of her that would always be undying and merciless -- the part of her that was truly the heart of the star  -- for the first time in his life Tristan was afraid of her. 

_ She -- it? -- isn’t looking at me. But why can’t it see me?  _ Tristan wondered, taking a few steps behind her.  _ It doesn’t matter, _ he told himself. _ ĺde said that this was something to take advantage of. But how? _

He saw his body unsheathe his bastard sword and raise it two-handed horizontally across his body, which sank into a fighting stance. Tristan had initially hoped never to raise a weapon to ĺde out of fear of truly harming her, but he knew a piece of sharp metal was hardly a threat to this new visage. 

The northern visage did not speak but rather screeched as it lunged for his body, fiery swords materializing in two of its hands; when they clashed Tristan felt the vibrations in his own invisible hands. He tried to get closer, still without knowing what he was going to do, as the different facets of ĺde squared off. Two of her other hands lashed out and a shockwave of blue energy hissed outward, knocking Tristan over and slightly back, and set itself as a shimmering perimeter scant feet away.

_ I have nothing to arm myself with -- nothing. And I’m not at full strength,  _ Tristan said, trying to quell the panic.  _ ĺde has taken what she can in order to defend.  _ As he watched his body parry, thrust and slice, practically dancing over the ice, every so often he could see a faint yellow glow from one limb or the other that illuminated his fogging breath. He got up.

_ “Take what’s yours,” _ came ĺde’s voice in his head. She said it so insistently that it led him to believe that she was referring to something obvious.  

_ What does she mean? _ Tristan scanned the northern visage as he crept closer. He didn’t recognize anything on its person that could be his. Even the swords it wielded did not seem wrought by man. 

His body scored a blow by tucking around the visage and cutting a hamstring. The visage temporarily toppled and insodoing, though it did not bleed exactly its image flickered -- the illusion of flesh disappeared to reveal the gleaming, elegant skeleton and it was in that moment that Tristan saw the heart of the heart -- a piercingly bright ingot of pure white. It was with an unexpected sense of gratefulness and surprise that he understood.

His body tried to go for the other hamstring but was blocked. Nevertheless, it distracted the visage enough. Tristan bolted to them and without fully knowing what he was doing, he plunged his hand through the visage’s back, through its spectral ribcage, and seized that heart. It did not beat so much as seethe. Pain like he’d never experienced before raced through him and his vision swam, threatening to plunge him into darkness. Worse still was when the visage’s head craned over its shoulder to glare at him, flesh returning and sealing around his arm before he could pull it away. One of the free arms maintaining the magical perimeter released its hold and instead snatched at him. Tristan did his best to keep out of its reach, though he did not know how long he could hold on. 

ĺde conducted his body around to the front of the visage and parried a double-blow from above, which sent his body to its knees. The visage was screaming. Finally his body’s strength gave out and the defense collapsed; the visage buried its two swords in his body’s shoulders. Tristan could barely feel the pain amongst that surging around his hand, and he yanked hard to try to free himself. He was alarmed when the visage flashed red and within moments, seemed to restructure itself until it was facing him. The free hand grabbed him by the neck and tried to rip him away; out of the corner of his eye he saw a sword plunging toward him and could only assume the other was doing the same.

“I won’t let you go. Not even to save myself!” he shouted into the visage’s featureless face. He was only certain he’d been heard when the swords paused. “If what I hold is truly mine, then I can happily die for it.”

Slowly, the swords drifted into his vision as they crossed between him and the visage over his throat. He could feel the magical auras that emanated from them licking at his jaw. The visage leaned in close and he thought he could see a brighter gold glow from two detailless eyes. His own eyes narrowed with the effort of keeping them open. His muscles were giving out -- all except those in his right hand, clasped tightly around the heart of the star. 

It was one of the longest moments in Tristan’s life before the visage said, gutturally, “Live for it.” 

The visage flashed red again and reconstructed itself, releasing him. Tristan collapsed on the ground. It stared down at him for a moment longer and then dissipated. He had just enough time to see both his body collapsed beside him, and the gleam of something cold and white in his hand, before an equally invisible force yanked his spirit over the ice back into his body. He spluttered and groaned; he laid on his back with barely the strength to move. He could hear the yowls of the lions dying into the wind, and Howl shouting at him. He blinked slowly.

Tristan raised his hand -- it was empty, but his palm was damp with sweat and melted ice.


	11. Earthly Ties

Madame Suliman sat back from her intense scrutiny of her crystal globe. Apart from the crystal’s faintly blue glow her rooms were lit only by a single candle, and that too was far away. She was alone, and angry.

This was far from what she’d had in mind, though she perhaps had only herself to thank. Ultimately cosmic energies were unpredictable, even if they seemed constant for a time -- and ‘unpredictable’ was what she had received. It seemed a poor return on investment for all the work she’d done on the Captain and ĺde both. Her curse on the former hadn’t been strong enough, evidently. Howl’s meddling hadn’t helped yet again. And ĺde...somehow ĺde had had agency beyond her imprisonment. 

Now that they’d managed to begin ĺde’s restoration process, it was only a matter of time before they returned to the palace to confront her. Although Madame Suliman had currently exhausted her supply of henchmen and, by association, much of her magic reserves to otherwise defend herself, she did have at least one advantage -- time. The restoration would take at least a few hours if not a day, which would give her time to not only rest and restore herself, but to form a plan and possibly arrange a backup plan with the still-oblivious royal family. The remaining unpredictable elements were the possible continued involvement of Howl Pendragon and whether she could resume siphoning ĺde’s strength to supplement her own.

_ If I am defeated, and live...if I must leave the palace, where will I go? There’s nowhere. ĺde’s purpose… _ She took a breath, admitted it to herself:  _ was not just to sustain my magic, my hold. She’s the closest to a true ‘Daughter Suliman’ I will ever have. _

Madame Suliman breathed deeply in, out. Instead of merely waving a hand like she normally did, she rang a small silver bell to summon one of her pages that guarded her door. “Prepare the royal family,” she said tiredly.   
  


* * *

_  
ĺde felt herself wandering through a fog ever so slowly, searching. Underfoot were the soft tones of grass and meadowflowers, and the ground rose. Although she had only been here once and despite the veils of fog that she passed though, she remembered this place, and was as happy that she remembered it as she was at the memory itself. She picked up her skirt and made her way to the crest of the hill and the higher she climbed, the stronger and more herself she felt. The fog dissipated. _

_ Two things were different this time. First, was that dawn was breaking on the horizon beyond the forest spread below her. Second, was that this time it was she who arrived at Tristan, his father’s pride of ten lions lazen at his feet.  _

_ “I was sent to find you,” he said, echoing her. _

__ They smiled at one another, and as they took one another’s hands the air was flooded with light --  ĺde could not rightly say if it came from the sun or within her. She felt herself sinking back into her physical body.  
  


* * *

 

ĺde’s eyes eased open, and gradually focused on the physical world she had come home to at last. It was twilight, and she was on her back on the glacier in the Iron Valley. The faces of Tristan and two others -- a wizard, from the feel of it, and a woman -- were above her and took on expressions of relief. 

_ No, Howl and Sophie Pendragon, remember?  _ another part of her reminded.

She smiled at Tristan but felt too tired to do anything more -- she couldn’t remember ever having felt tired. His eyes were watering, and when he gathered her into his arms she felt her own tears rising, too. 

“We should get out of the elements,” she heard Sophie say, though her voice was muffled. Someone helped wrap her bare body in something -- a cloak or blanket, maybe.

Tristan stood, carrying her despite the fact that it seemed he could barely move himself. He had his mouth pressed to her crown and she felt so grateful for that, too. Everything became hazy -- instead ĺde became preoccupied with the flow of magic she could feel in her body. The strongest symbiotic exchange had once been between her and Madame Suliman; that link was still there, but it was slowly but surely being overpowered by the one she’d had all along with the Captain without realizing. She could see three magical channels in her mind’s eye: gleaming brighter and brighter on and off with their heartbeats was the largest one between her and Tristan, while two other channels stretched far away out of sight to Madame Suliman and Prince Edward, the former maybe half the size of the one she shared with Tristan and the latter maybe half that still.

_ I must restore the little prince, _ ĺde realized guiltily as she remembered what she’d done.  _ His family will not think to look for a fish. _

But more than that, her thoughts turned to her erstwhile mother. Swift on the heels of the memory of Prince Edward transforming into a koi was the memory of the reason she’d done so to begin with -- her distress at the overheard conversation between Madame Suliman and the Captain, wherein she’d learnt what she was. The ensuing confrontation, the trap, the shattering into fragments of herself, the weakness, the truth…

_  She had the Captain capture me, and then cast a spell of amnesia on us both so we would forget the whole thing. All so she could use my strength as her own. Now she wants the Captain...Tristan...dead. _ ĺde could feel the curse Madame Suliman had placed on him, like jagged stone piercing the fine silk of his aura.  _ I can remove it, once my strength is back, but ultimately it means nothing if Mother -- no, Madame Suliman -- remains in power. _

Light and warmth broke over them, suddenly. ĺde realized they were entering a house. A coarse voice greeted them and ĺde glanced in its direction, at the same time recognizing the magical energy of a fellow star -- a fire spirit, appropriately stoking the fire in the hearth. She also recognized the pure, bright mortal energy that all young children had, like Prince Edward’s. A young boy, with an older adolescent boy, stood from a game in front of the hearth. 

“Markl, thank you so much, again,” said Sophie, “but could you take Morgan into our bedroom for a few minutes? Quickly now.” 

Tristan had turned them both, ĺde assumed to hide her nakedness from young eyes. She heard a couple of whines but, ultimately, soft bare footsteps retreating as bade. The warmth grew as Tristan brought her closer to the fire. Sophie began rushing about, muttering about finding something suitable for a star to wear; ĺde wanted to reassure her but did not have her voice back yet.

“So this is the infamous Miss Suliman, the Witch of the Waters,” said the star in the hearth. “Looks like you were successful, Captain! Just in the nick of time, too.”

Tristan knelt down with ĺde and accepted another blanket from Howl, wrapping ĺde in it. “Indeed,” he said, coughing.

“I’ve never met an ice varietal before,” said the star in the hearth with a mock-haughty tone. ĺde took the hint and lifted her head to look at it. The face in the flame was smirking at her, but not unkindly.

“ĺde, this is Calcifer,” Tristan said softly. “He’s here because…”

“I contracted with Howl,” Calcifer finished for him. “Originally. Just like you contracted with Madame Suliman -- or was it the Captain? So confusing -- originally. Have to say it’s nice to have some kin around here.”

ĺde smiled, nodded. It was, in a way. It was nice to not feel like the only one on earth, though she’d been aware, via Madame Suliman, of how Howl had bolstered his own magic -- even if it had never been possible for her to realize she was under the same circumstances. She’d also forgotten what it was like to feel the company of fellow stars. Even now, at this mundane level, she could feel their similar energies reaching out testily and tickling each other, bolstering one another without being absorbed like light being reflected infinitely between two mirrors. Despite being contained in physical forms, they could be reminded of their inner natures.

This thought reminded ĺde of the confrontation on the glacier with her final visage -- the heart of her. A heart that was meant to be untouchable by any mortal, no matter the contracts or the magic or the trickery -- there was only one way they could. She could still feel the impression of Tristan’s hand around her heart even now.

ĺde focused on Calcifer, and then on Howl nearby, realizing something.  _ That’s why we stay. Truly. Because we  _ let _ them in, and they touch us. And when they do, we choose to stay. It’s stronger than any contract.  _ She looked up at Tristan.  _ It is indeed a kind of falling. Because we love them. _

He noticed her looking and met her eyes. He looked different than she had known him -- his face had softened, even though the curse’s hold was still managing to age him well beyond his years. His smile was kinder than the smirk she had been so accustomed to seeing throughout their acquaintance -- what felt like another life. How long ago it seemed that they had spoken in the rooftop courtyard that night, or that they had made a poor attempt of a waltz the night of the Spring Flush! His eyes had been a rich brown then, to be sure, but now she was amazed by how much more she could see in them.

Sophie returned, and Tristan at last released her so that she could be helped into a borrowed dress. Despite gaining clothes, ĺde already felt a little colder without his embrace.

“How are you feeling, Captain?” Howl asked him.

“Happy,” said Tristan as he looked over his shoulder at her, then seemed to realize what he said and cleared his throat, “Better. Not completely myself, of course, but the curse’s effects seem to be abating.”

“I wonder why that could be,” Sophie said under her breath with a smile as she helped ĺde sit on the armchair and laced up the back of the navy blue dress. 

“The state of the palace and Madame Suliman still concern me, though,” Tristan added.

“She’ll be weak after all that mess we went through,” said Howl. “Not to mention, you are replacing the bond she has with Miss Suliman. She’ll have limited options.”

“Which could be good, could be bad,” said Calcifer.

“But we need to make a move as soon as we can,” said Howl. “Once Miss Suliman has rested, of course.”

ĺde only realized that she was reaching for Tristan when he suddenly walked back over to her and took the hand held out to him. She felt better, warmer. She wished she could speak.

“Miss Suliman -- “ Sophie began, stopped herself. 

ĺde looked at her inquisitively.

Sophie smiled, “First, I’m sure you probably don’t want to be called that any longer, am I right?”

ĺde hadn’t considered this, but nodded in surprise.

“Then, Miss ĺde, I know you’ve just recently rejoined us, but -- do you think you’re able to remove the curse on the Captain?” Sophie asked.

ĺde squeezed Tristan’s hand a little harder. She opened her mouth to speak, willing her throat to open too. It took a few tries and crackles, but at last she was able to whisper, “In time.”   
  


* * *

 

ĺde woke a few hours later -- woke! from a true sleep! -- in the bunk beneath the Pendragons’ stairs at the sound of Tristan coughing. She’d fallen asleep to the sounds of murmured conversation and at some point, someone had moved her from the armchair to the bed. Already -- even from what she guessed to be only a couple of hours’ rest -- she felt stronger, more herself. Her true self, complete with memory and emotion and life, was coming back to her piece by piece, hour by hour.

Tristan was sitting in the armchair now in front of the low fire; there was no sign of Calcifer. He coughed again.

“Captain,” she said quietly, sympathetically, as the coughing continued despite his attempts to stifle it with water and his hand.

Her voice startled him, as if he’d forgotten she was there. “Now I’ve woken you,” he grumbled to himself, “I’m sorry.”

She reached for him again. “Let me.”

Tristan hesitated, looking at her hand. “You should save your strength for yourself.”

After considering various responses, ĺde settled on simply correcting herself from earlier. “Tristan,” she said, letting a slight plea into her voice.

His eyes rose in surprise to meet hers. She smiled to reassure him. After a moment he rose from the chair and came to sit beside her on the edge of the bed. She cupped her palm and though she had to concentrate more than normal, its lines eventually glowed and water emerged, glimmering with her magic.

“I cannot break the curse yet, but I can soothe it,” she said slowly, her voice as dry as his skin. “Drink.”

Tristan seemed uncertain but did as she asked, cupping her upraised hand with his own to steady it and gently lowering his mouth. She angled her wrist and tipped it, kept the water flowing from her as he sipped tentatively. It did not take much for the rasping noise in his chest to abate or for the wrinkles in his skin to grow lighter then disappear. After a minute or so he drew back and she did not press, enchanted instead by the way he brushed a stray drop from the corner of his mouth with his thumb. He did not look at her.

_ He is imperfect, and beautiful. He is earthly. He is all that is good. He is my champion, my fortune and my rest. _ After a few moments of quiet, ĺde said, “Thank you for finding me.”

Tristan shook his head, but it did not seem to be at her words because another moment passed before he said, “I dreamt of you. You were calling to me. But I think...before any of this happened, you had been calling to me all along -- or I was calling to you, it’s hard to tell the difference, now. Maybe even before you came to the palace. Maybe even before I left home.” At last he looked up at her. “ĺde,  _ you _ found  _ me _ . And the truth...”

ĺde held her breath.

Tristan swallowed, resettled, squared his shoulders for courage. “The truth is, I never want to be parted from you again.”

ĺde felt her face grow warm and she smiled broadly, amazedly. A thousand new things that she couldn’t name clamored in her chest. Her hands shook as they rose, caressed his face, smoothed his hair, ran over his smile as though she were blind and learning him for the first time. “Then we will not be parted,” she whispered. “By anyone, or anything. You are my one.”

Tristan huffed a laugh and looked at his lap in embarrassment. She found the shyness endearing, and pulled him forward and kissed him. They were shaking, and she found it wonderful. All of it was wonderful.


	12. Kindess

The next day, having agreed that it was their fight and not that of the Pendragons, ĺde and Tristan stepped out of the carriage at the palace staircase and stood side by side between the two stone lions that flanked it, gazing up at the facade gleaming in the morning sun. Tristan had regained his uniform jacket and sword, and had dressed himself for duty. ĺde meanwhile had replaced the dress she borrowed from Sophie with a summoned one of her own in cerulean, ruby and gold that complimented his uniform. Both had also regained much of their strength. 

ĺde had expected for them to be arrested on sight, but instead, as Tristan offered his arm and they ascended the ever-heavily-guarded steps, his men greeted him with salutes, nods and smiles as though nothing were wrong. They passed each other a curious look. The front doors even stood open to the pleasant weather.

One of the guards at the doors asked, “Did you enjoy your trip, Sir?”

This gave them pause, but Tristan responded, “Yes, thank you, Mueller,” and they continued walking into the shade of the palace proper.

“It’s her handiwork,” ĺde whispered. “I can feel it.”

“So can I,” Tristan agreed.

“Oh?”

“Of course they’re my men, after all, but...I do not know whether it was swallowing the ingot of your magic, or something else, but these past few days -- as memories creep back -- I feel like I have a better sense for magic than I once did.” He cleared his throat, looking around. “Something to investigate later, for sure.”

She made a noise of agreement. “First, Madame --”

As if on cue, a page found them. “Miss Suliman, your mother and the royal family are in the south parlor and have invited you and the Captain to join them.”

They followed the page through the palace, buzzing with its normal morning activities as though nothing had transpired the past few days, least of all having anything to do with the two of them. ĺde, however, felt the thin veneer of Madame Suliman’s magic on everyone they saw, like a wet gray sheet that turned them into ghosts. Whether it was amnesia or something else did not matter -- it was a deceit and it made her stomach turn.

They entered the south parlor with its view of the formal rose garden that would explode with color in maybe a couple of weeks’ time, which took advantage of the copious morning sun that warmed its lilac walls to a dusty blush. On its gilt and silk-upholstered furnishings sat the royal family in walking attire, to all appearances taking tea before a genteel excursion: the King and Queen of Ingary, the two Princesses and Prince Justin -- and young Prince Edward, playing with a toy lion at the feet of Madame Suliman, behind whom stood the imposing figure of a Lieutenant she did not recognize. The group looked up at the pair’s entry -- all save Madame Suliman, whose stony eyes appeared locked on them before the door had even been opened. She had a measured smile on her face.

“Captain! Daughter Suliman!” the King greeted. “Good to see you both. You’ll take tea, won’t you? How was your little adventure to the eastern provinces?”

The two of them overcame their shock and greeted the family in turn with a bow and curtsy. 

“You do both seem quite refreshed,” Princess Beatrice commented, and she and Princess Valeria shared a giggle.

While Tristan did an admirable job of playing along with whatever ruse this was, ĺde’s attention was on the young prince. He did not have the bright pure energy of a child, and other magical tastes were mixed in besides. It was not Prince Edward. She locked eyes with Madame Suliman, whose smile remained.

An awkward pause fell, and Tristan nodded at the boy, “I see you found your son, Princess.”

_ So he senses it, too, _ ĺde realized.

“Whatever do you mean, Captain?” Prince Justin asked.

Tristan gave a good-natured smirk for effect. “Nothing, your Highness. He made a good game of hide-and-seek with me earlier, is all.”

ĺde wanted verification, too. She crouched on the fine carpet beside the boy and asked, “Good Prince, do you remember the story I told you the other night, when you couldn’t sleep? About the sailboat and the mermaids?”

The boy hesitated, eyeing her, but then nodded.

There had been no story. ĺde feigned relief. “Good.” She stood, returned to Tristan’s side.

“If you’ll excuse us,” Tristan said, “we really should freshen up. It was a long ride.”

“No doubt! If you feel up to it you should join us later at the lakes,” said the King.

The pair bowed and curtsied, turned to leave. ĺde caught Madame Suliman’s glance on the way, but nothing was said.

“And do tell us when you set a date for the wedding!” the Queen called after them.

Both of them were too preoccupied with getting out of the room to feel embarrassed. When the door closed behind them, Tristan asked, “That wasn’t Prince Edward, was it?”

“No,” ĺde agreed. “But if we find the real one and bring him before his parents, I think it can break the trance the family seems to be under. The breaking of most spells involves the weakness around which the caster originally built them.”

“Madame Suliman did say to me, that night, that she couldn’t see him. She must not know where he is,” Tristan volunteered.

“The last I saw him was in my room. I turned him into a fish to save him from the waters I summoned.” 

ĺde took Tristan’s hand and began to rush back through the palace. They were turning the corner of the banister to go upstairs when Tristan paused, looking from whence they came. ĺde looked too, and saw a tall figure following them at a distance down the hall.

“He’s the one from the parlor,” ĺde noted.

“Lieutenant Arnold, my second-in-command.”

ĺde tightened her grip on Tristan’s arm when he nearly called out to the man. “Don’t,” she hissed. “If he was on our side he would have called out already. He’s under the trance, too. She’s sent him to follow us.”

As if he heard her, Lieutenant Arnold drew his sword and broke into a sprint. Tristan drew his own and pushed ĺde ahead of him up the stairs. They took them as quickly as they could, and raced down the carpeted halls until finally, they emerged into the rooftop courtyard between the rooms belonging to the Sulimans. The happily-splashing fountain was soon drowned out by the sound of swords clashing between the Lieutenant and the Captain.

“Go!” Tristan shouted to ĺde over his shoulder. 

ĺde paused in the middle of the courtyard, for a few second thinking there might be some way that the prince, in his koi form, was still floating around in her room somewhere. But the traces of that night had been cleared and packed away, including the remains of her magic -- all except one. She ran to the decorative pond as Tristan and Lieutenant Arnold agilely parried, thrust, and swiped at one another, the former pleading to his friend to come to his senses.

ĺde collapsed to her knees and plunged her hands through the water lilies, disturbing the fish. She concentrated, pushing her magic into her hands and into the water, calling for the prince. Close behind her, Tristan forced away a strike and moved them safely away. Arduous moments later, she at last felt smooth scales under her fingertips, and closed her hands gently around the silver and gold fish. She smiled.

Prince Edward regained the form of a human child, still in his night smock, spluttering as he exploded from the water’s surface. A moment later and he was sobbing, pushing through the lilies into ĺde’s arms. She pulled him over the lip of the pool and shushed him, “I’m here now, good Prince. I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”

“Miss ĺd-ĺde…” he cried. “My -- my momma, where is my momma...:”

Unfortunately, there were more pressing matters. ĺde remained crouching, keeping the prince close to her, as she watched the two men clash. Tristan was tiring, the effects of the curse creeping back and, combined with the sheer girth of Lieutenant Arnold, not doing him any favors. The next few moves happened too quickly for her to follow, and suddenly Tristan’s sword was flung out of his hand and sliding away out of sight. He went to retaliate with a punch instead, but the Lieutenant’s hand was already hooking in and striking him hard on the cheek. Tristan stumbled, but did not fall.

He spat blood, caught her eye. “Go! Take the prince!” He came to stand in front of them, raising his fists as the Lieutenant laughed and approached them.

She was too angry at the suggestion to speak. Instead she touched two fingertips to the line where the floortiles met. Pale blue magic sped along it and followed its kin, outlining a box around the Lieutenant and erupting into thin, fierce walls of pluming water. Just as the Lieutenant swiped his sword through it, the water froze. Though he tried jerking the sword out, smacking it with his hand, kicking it, ramming his shoulder against it, it held fast. His frosted shadow bellowed at them from his prison.

“That’ll hold him for a while,” ĺde said, and stood. “Let’s go.”

With heavy steps, Tristan retrieved his sword. ĺde picked up Prince Edward and they hurried back into the palace. When they finally reached its doors, ĺde could better hear that Tristan was out of breath owing to how quiet the parlor had grown. It was only because she felt a stronger magical energy inside it that she knew it wasn’t simply because the family had left. Her suspicions were confirmed when the doors were pulled open before she could reach out to touch their handles, revealing teacups spilt on the floor and the royal family leaning against one another or sagging in their seats, asleep. The imposter-prince was gone, and the room was decidedly darker, as though clouds obscured the sun -- ĺde felt the heavy magic in the room like a cloying scent, a humidity. Its source, Madame Suliman, was unattended in her wheelchair by the windows, the blue, clear sky beyond them muted into gray.

“ĺde, I --” 

ĺde turned to Tristan, alarmed. 

His shoulders were slumping, the curse’s effects having accelerated; he was even trying to prop himself up with his sword. “-- I don’t think I can…”

“You should rest, Captain,” said Madame Suliman. “Take this one kindness from me. You too, young Prince. I must speak with my daughter.”

In her arms, Prince Edward yawned, his head already resting against her shoulder. ĺde was powerless to help Tristan as he dropped to his knees, trying in vain to keep himself upright, and then collapsing over on his side. Seeing no way around it, and noting that they were all otherwise unharmed, ĺde steeled herself and slowly walked over to the settee to gently lay Prince Edward in his mother’s lap. She faced Madame Suliman.

After a long moment, the older woman said, “You understand, don’t you?”

“Release them,” ĺde said instead.

Her head tilted. “You’ve grown impatient in the last few days, haven’t you? Think of this as, yes, a kindness. Would you rather I have transfigured them? Done something far worse?” When ĺde didn’t respond, Madame Suliman continued, “It was also kindness that stayed my hand with the Captain, and with you, don’t forget.”

“It was  _ deception _ ,” ĺde corrected. “You --”

“Deception is also a kindness,” Madame Suliman interrupted more forcefully. She resettled in her chair. “In casting amnesia charms over both of you, your lives have gone quite smoothly, haven’t they? Free of the trauma of your meeting, of your circumstance. You must admit that it was not a hard life.”

“No,” ĺde agreed, “but it was not true life.”

This seemed to amuse Madame Suliman. “And you, a demon continuing to clothe yourself in human skin, is true, is honest? Not to mention that you wouldn’t have any of this ‘life’ without me in the first place, honest or not. And what’s better, ĺde -- to be honest, or to be kind? That fool that’s fallen in love with you,” she nodded at the Captain on the floor, “is going to die because you’ve both been so  _ insistent _ on honesty over kindness.” When ĺde took an angry step forward, Madame Suliman stopped her with, “And what happens if kindness does not stay  _ your  _ hand, ĺde? You defeat me, kill me, and what happens?” The indulgent smile was gone. “The entire balance of magical power among the Royal Sorcerers is toppled, and Ingary itself is placed at risk. Will you take all of that on your shoulders, alone, just because you wanted a ‘true life’?” Her voice rose, “You are an object, ĺde. A natural force. If it wasn’t me to contract with you it would have been some other sorcerer, or else you would have died alone and unused anyhow. Your purpose does not extend beyond magical energy. You are ungrateful if you think you deserve more of a life than what I gifted to you in the first place.”

ĺde’s anger suddenly dissipated, but not into hurt. Rather, a coldness, a ruthlessness that she hadn’t felt since the day Tristan had been forced to chase her into that cave, when she’d fought against the net that caught her. She would not be caught this time. 

_ Not all stars fall to earth, or are commanded to fall, and even if they are not all of them remain because of it, bereft of will, _ she thought.  _ Not all stars fuel the hearts of sorcerers. Not all stars are fire -- I am a cold star. _ Her gaze rose to Madame Suliman. “I am a force of nature,” she corrected again, feeling that force begin to tremble in her veins once more. She couldn’t help but bare her teeth, “And I had life and agency long before you were born. You will regret ever bringing me to earth!”

ĺde raised a hand, pulled her magic ever inward to the very heart of her. It was the opposite of her past tactic, which had proved unsuccessful in the courtyard that night. Now, however, with Madame Suliman weakened and understanding her long reliance on ĺde’s own power, she knew what to do. She felt even the tiniest of dregs of her magic leeching from every direction -- from Lieutenant Arnold upstairs, to the scraps she’d left in her room and over the four compass-points from the past few days, even from the rivers and stratosphere rainclouds and city wells where she had deposited the water after dispelling the storm, everywhere except from Tristan -- but most of all, she pulled it from within Madame Suliman’s own reserves. To do the opposite, and perform magic outwardly at all, would merely give her fuel. Deprivation -- ĺde glanced down at Tristan, the parched lines of his face -- was key.

Madame Suliman attempted to counter with magic of her own but the fuschia spurts merely licked between her fingers and guttered out. ĺde could feel her attempt to pull back on the blue-green stream of magic soaring between them, but her sorcerer’s muscles were not accustomed to the action and could not put up much of a fight. The older woman was grimacing at her, panicking, wrinkling.

“Magic can be neither created nor destroyed,” ĺde uttered, “and in the end, it must always return to the source.” She closed her hand around the last of it, brought it to her chest gratefully.

Madame Suliman was slumped in her chair, her breathing labored, frowning at ĺde. “You…” she muttered hoarsely, coughed. 

As ĺde walked in her direction, the room began to grow brighter, less heavy. When she stood beside Madame Suliman she was able to detect the last pitiful thimbleful of the sorceress’ own magic that remained, keeping the thread of the spells in this room intact. The coldness that’d overtaken ĺde’s heart began to abate; her skin warmed. She looked down at the old woman, her face blank.

Madame Suliman stared at her for a long time, and ĺde watched the unspoken thoughts march behind her eyes until they grew weary rather than angry. Her breathing calmed. At last she looked away, into the room. “I thought it was a kindness,” she whispered.

ĺde considered this a moment, and then answered, “Kindnesses are always honest.” She leaned over and gently kissed her on the cheek, as though greeting her. A hot tear coursed its way from Madame Suliman’s squeezed-shut eye and met ĺde’s cheek as she pulled away. ĺde saw her breathe deeply out. She stepped back as Madame Suliman began to slowly but surely wheel herself out of the room.

She understood. “Where will you go?” ĺde asked.

“You don’t need to worry about that right now,” was the answer. “You’ll know when I have decided.” She paused at the door, looked over her shoulder at ĺde but said nothing. ĺde offered her a smile which was not returned, but Madame Suliman looked at her a moment longer before she retreated into the hall out of sight. 

ĺde let her go. She turned to the others, who were slowly stirring with harrumphs and yawns and stretches. She moved to help Tristan, who was marveling at his hands and feeling his curse-free face.

The King sat up, blinked a few times, and then exclaimed, “Good gracious, Captain -- what’re you doing on the floor?”

“Apologies, Sire,” he said and got to his feet. His eyes, however, were on ĺde, and their hands found each other. 

“I thought you were both going to freshen up, at any rate?” the King continued. “We’ll be headed out soon,” he stifled a yawn.

“Yes, Sire,” Tristan said, “we are.” 

ĺde smiled at him and though they hurried into the corridor so she could explain, when she looked around there was no sign of Madame Suliman. Her eyes fell, then she turned to Tristan. “How do you feel?” she ran a hand over his collarbone.

It was his turn to smile at her. “Happy. You?”

She leaned in to whisper in his ear, “Happy. Like dancing.”

“Even if it’s badly?”

“Badly is fine,” she grinned. “It’s honest.” 

“Well, then,” he said and wrapped his arm around her waist, “dance we shall.” He took her other hand. They took turns leading each other in an erratic, subdued waltz in the hall, their laughter echoing around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Note from the Author: At last, we're done! I sincerely hope you've enjoyed and thank you so much for taking the time to read and tell me what you think.

**Author's Note:**

> A(nother) Note from the Author: I've compromised what I feel to be an generation issue between the movie and the books in terms of the King of Ingary and Prince Justin, whom in the books are supposed to be brothers - here, I've made them uncle and nephew to better-fit the movie-verse but still remain true to them being related. Similarly, for lack of any information I've named Justin and Beatrice's son Edward.


End file.
